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IRISH HISTORY 

FOR ENGLISH READERS 



FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES 
TO THE CLOSE OF THE TEAR 1885 




By WM. STEPHENSON GRE 

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CONTENTS. 






CHAP. PAGE 

I. — The Age of Legends, 3 

II. — St. Patrick and his Times, - 8 
III. — The Rise and Fall of Holiness and Learning, 12 

IV.— The Invasion. 17 

V. — Three Centuries of Norman Rule, - - 21 

VI.— The Geraldines, ...... 25 

VII. — How Shane O'Neill held Ulster, - - 32 

frlJL — The Desmond Rebellion, .... 40 

I '. — Elizabeth's War with Hugh O'Neill, - 46 

X. — The Plantation of Ulster, - - 52 

XL— The Cvtl War of 1641, .... 57 

XII. — The Plantation of Cromwell, 65 

XIII. — The Restoration, ------ 69 

XIV.— The Revolution, 77 

XV. — The Treaty of Limerick, .... 83 

XVI.— The Penal Code, % - 86 

XVII. — The Commercial Restraints, - 91 

XVIII. — The Land Difficulties, - - - 94 

XIX.— Woods Halfpence, 99 

XX. — The Patriot Party, 101 

XXL— The Volunteers, 107 

XXIL— Grattan's Parliament, Ill 

XXIII. — The United Irishmen. .... 115 



CONTENTS. ii. 

CHA?. PAGE 

XXIV.— "Ninety-eight," 119 

XXV.— The Prospect of Union, 122 

XXVI.— The Act of Union, .... 12s 

XXVIL— The Peace of 1815, - 138 

XXVIII.— Emancipation, 138 

XXIX.— The Repeal Year, 144 

XXX.— The Famine, - - - - - - 147 

XXXI.— Young Ireland, ...... 156 

XXXII.— The Land, 160 

XXXIII.— Fentanism, 166 

XXXIV.— Lopping the Upas Tree, - - • - 172 

XXXV.— The Home Rule Movement, 178 

XXXVI.— The Land League, - 182 

XXXVII.— The Land Act, 191 

XXXVIII.— Ireland Under the Crimes Act, 195 

XXXIX.— The Elections of 1885, 201 

Table of Dates, 208 

List of Authorities, .... 215 



IRISH HISTORY 

FOR ENGLISH READERS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE AGE OF LEGENDS. 



It is perhaps because there is so little that is pleasant in 
their modern history that the* Irish cherish the traditions 
of olden times so deeply. "We profess to know but little of 
the history of Britain before the Roman conquest, but Irish 
legends and mythology go back to two thousand three 
hundred and seventy nine-years before the Christian era: 
or thirty years before the flood, and two hundred years 
earlier than the supposed date of the building of Memphis. 

Such early dates are naturally of no historic value, and 
refer to legendary events and legendary personages, but 
the fact that the gods and heroes of those bygone days are 
remembered proves that Ireland had reached a degree of 
civilization very rarely attained so early in the world's 
history. 

The legends tell us that Queen Keasair and her followers 
came to Ireland from the east of Europe about 2,380 years 
before Christ, and that the Keasaireans were driven from 
the island by Partolan three hundred years later; but the 
monks, taking advantage of the intermediate deluge, say 
that the Keasaireans were destroyed by the flood. Be 
this as it may, only one of the Keasaireans has left any 
impress on Irish history — that one is Fintan, the salmon 
god, the patron of poets and historians, who duly reap- 
peared from time to time as long as any belief in fairies 
continued. 

When the Keasaireans were drowned in the deluge, 



4 HUSH HISTORY FOIt ENGLISH READERS. 

Fintan escaped by taking the form of a salmon, until the 
receding waters left him high and dry on Tara Hill, when 
he resumed his humanity. It was he who related the 
history of Ireland to St. Patrick, and some legends tell us 
that it is to Fintan that we owe our knowledge of these 
early times, he having visibly appeared to the bards for 
their enlightenment. Others say that Amergin, the Druid, 
collected the materials for this early history, but as he did 
not live till a thousand years after the Keasaireans, be may 
have been very glad of a little help from Fintan in his re- 
searches. 

After the destruction of the Keasaireans, Partolan and 
his followers came to the island. These invaders came from 
some civilized country, and brought with them a knowledge 
of sowing and reaping and other, agricultural arts, and be- 
gan cultivating the island. But this was already owned by a 
savage race of giants called the Formorians, who, though 
they themselves cared nothing for the land, grudged the 
use of it to others, and exterminated the unlucky race of 
Partolan. The fate of those unhappy invaders seems to 
have remained unknown in the distant country whence 
they came, for Partolan was followed by his cousin Nemed, 
who, with his five sons, headed a large party of invaders, 
and landed on the coast of Leinster. The Nemedians 
fared no better than their forerunners; the Formorians 
gave them battle and conquered them, with such terrible 
slaughter that only three of their chiefs escaped. These 
were Briotan, who settled in Britain and became the an- 
cestor of the British gods, Semeon Brae and Ibath, who 
escaped to the east of Europe. The descendants of both 
these latter were destined to return to Ireland; the child- 
ren of Semeon Brae as the Firbolgs, and those of Ibath as 
the Tuatha-de Danan (people of the fairies), the last and 
greatest race of Irish gods. The Firbolgs were not deities; 
still, in the time of their last king, Eocha-Mac-Erc, Ire- 
land was in a position almost without parallel in her 
history, for, say the bards, ''Good were the days of the 
sovereignty of Mac-Erc, there was no wet or tempestuous 
weather in Erin, neither was there any unfruitful year." 

This happy state of things was, however, brought to a 



THE AGE OF LEGENDS. 5 

close by the Tuatha-de Danan, the descendants of Ibath, 
and therefore, like the Firbolgs, of Nemedian descent. 

These heroes landed on Wexford coast, and then, hav- 
ing burnt their fleet to cut off their retreat, they wrapped 
themselves in the black cloud of invisibility, and drifted 
like a mighty mist to the Iron Mountains on the borders 
of Leitrim. The Firbolgs were assembled on the neigh- 
boring plains of Sligo, and there, for six days, waged the 
uneven fight between gods and men. At last the brave 
Mac-Erc fell on the coast near Ballysadare, where a mound 
of earth still marks the grave of the last of the Firbolg 
kings. His people were reduced to the condition of a 
subject race, and the Tuatha-de Danan believed them- 
selves masters of the soil. But the Formorians, though 
absentees, were still in possession, and yearly, after harvest- 
time, sent agents to sweep away the produce of the land, 
and the Tuatha-de Danan in their turn became a crushed 
and broken people, till they were freed from their bondage 
by Lu-Lam-Finn, a prince of mixed Formorian and de 
Danan descent, and from that time till the Scoto- Milesian 
invasion the de Danan people owned the land. Nor, say 
the legends, did they then utterly abandon it; but, draw- 
ing around them that cloak of misty darkness which had 
helped them to victory at their invasion, they retired to 
the mountains, whence from time to time they appear in 
the guise of Ban-Shees, for the Shees and Tuatha-de Danan 
are alike the people of the fairies. 

The story of Ireland before the Milesian invasion is 
purely mythological, but it is probable that an invasion 
from the Spanish peninsula really took place about 1,000 
years before Christ, when Solomon was king of Israel, and 
about 300 years before the foundation of Rome. 

Milesius, or Miles, though a native of Spain was prob- 
ably of Phoenecian descent, and from him and his wife, 
Scotia, all the royal and noble families in Ireland claim to 
be descended. A peaceable colonization of Ireland was 
attempted during the lifetime of Milesius by his brother 
Ith, who was slain by the Tuatha-de Danan, and in revenge 
for this deed the eight sons of Milesius set out to conquer 
the country. 



G IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

Many and terrible were the adventures of that invasion, 
in which five out of the eight sons of Milesius lost their 
lives, but at length Heber, Heremon, and Amergin landed 
on different parts of the coast, and, attacking the Tuatha- 
de Danan from all sides, managed to subdue them. 

Amergin, being a Druid, could not reign, so Heber and 
Heremon arranged to divide the country between them, 
but being unable to come to any agreement, they met for a 
decisive battle at Gaeshill, in King's County, where Heber 
and many of his followers were killed, and from then till 
the date of the Norman invasion the descendants of Here- 
mon ruled the island in an unbroken line of 197 Scoto- 
Milesian kings. 

The first of these with whom we need concern ourselves 
is Ollav Fohla, the founder of that famous code known 
as the Brehon laws. These were administered by the Bre- 
hons or judges, and, having been revised by St. Patrick, 
were obeyed by Christian Ireland; it was decreed by 
Edward III. that no English subject should be tried by 
Brehon law, but its authority was recognized by the native 
Irish until the middle of the seventeenth century. Ollav 
Fohla was succeeded by a line of five or six and twenty 
kings, and then a ruling queen — Macha, The date of her 
accession (299 B. c.) is important, for Tiherna, the great 
Irish historian of the eleventh century, held it to be the 
earliest authentic date in Irish history, and Macha is also 
noteworthy as the founder of the city of Armagh, the 
capital of Ulster throughout the heroic ages. 

In these early days Ireland was divided into four or five 
provinces, each governed by its own Ard-Eigh, or head 
king, who had many petty kings or chieftains reigning 
under him. The latest and best known division of Ireland 
was into the five provinces of Ulster, Leinster, Minister, 
Connaught, and Meath, and the kings of these provinces 
were perpetually contending for the supremacy. In very 
early times the king of Ulster usually was victorious, but 
about the year seventy of our era the king of Meath became 
Ard-Righ of all Erin, and held his court at Tara. The 
'eldest son of the reigning king was usually elected Tanist, 
or heir, but any member of the five royal families of Ireland 



THE AGE OF LEGENDS. 7 

might be chosen during the lifetime of the king. But 
Meath did not gain or maintain the supremacy without a 
struggle, and the petty chieftains were in a state of perpet- 
ual warfare with one another. The island, thus weakened 
by internal dissensions, would doubtless have fallen an easy 
prey to invaders from Rome, Gaul, Britain, and Caledonia, 
had not a volunteer army been raised from among the 
nobles of the whole of Ireland for the defence of the country 
from foreign foes. These Fianna-Erin, or Fenians, were 
in many respects the equivalent to King Arthur's knights: 
chivalrous, courageous, pure. The "heroes of Erin" were 
the idols of the people upon whom they were quartered 
during the six winter months. In the summer they lived 
by hunting and fishing, and after a time they exacted as a 
right the whole of the wild game and large fish of the coun- 
try. In return for their privileges, they performed both in 
times of peace and war all the duties of police, and in in- 
ternal warfare they espoused the cause of the chieftain by 
whose people they were maintained. Thus Munster Fe- 
nians fought against the Fenians of Meath in the early 
days of their society, but as the organization grew in power 
and extent, they banded themselves together and held all 
Ireland in a state of subjection or fear. The need for such 
an organization, too, was passing away; Ireland was yearly 
growing more united, and the supremacy of the Tara king 
was more and more generally acknowledged. The power 
of Rome, and the consequent fear of Roman invasion, was 
waning, and the Fenians, abusing their power, had become 
an oppressive burden to the country, till, in the year 281, 
the king of Tara headed the populace in a revolt against the 
Fianna, who from that time gradually faded away. The 
supremacy of Tara now became undisputed, and the power 
of Ireland grew in extent till, in the time of Niall Mor, 
the invasions of the Scotic marauders were a terror to the 
neighboring coasts of Britain, Gaul, and Caledonia. 



IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 



CHAPTER II. 

ST. PATRICK AND HIS TIMES. 

After many successful raids in Gaul and Britain, Mall 
Mor, in the tenth year of his reign (388) invaded Gaul, 
and at the close of a successful campaign in Brittany 
returned to Erin, bringing with him "thousands of 
Christian captives/' among whom was a lad of sixteen 
named Succoth, who from his noble birth was called 
Patricius. The young Patrick was sold into slavery, and 
was employed as a shepherd, till after seven years of cap- 
tivity a prophetic dream inspired him to escape. But in 
the happy Breton home, which he reached after many 
perils, the vision of heathen Erin distressed his soul, and 
a second prophetic dream bade him prepare himself for 
the evangelization of Erin. Breaking free from all earthly 
ties, he took the monastic habit of Tours, and seven years 
later he went to Rome; but he eventually joined the bare- 
footed Augustines, and was in their monastery at Auxeure 
when the news of the death of St. Paladius reached him. 
He then went to Rome and offered to succeed Paladius as 
missionary to Erin, and having been consecrated arch- 
bishop he, with a company of twenty priests, set out on 
his mission in 432. There were already a few Christians 
in Ireland; five unsuccessful missions had prepared the 
ground for St. Patrick's success, but the mass of the 
people still adhered to some form of heathenism of which 
Tittle trace remains. There is proof that the fire and sun 
were worshipped, but, curiously enough, the race which 
after the introduction of Christianity became the most 
devout in Europe seems to have been singularly irreligious 
in pagan times. We find no trace of intense devotion to 
the gods or of ascetic qualities, and the influence of the 
Druids seems to have been moral rather than spiritual. 
The legends, too, are devoid of religious feeling, and the 



ST. PAT1UCK AND HIS TIMES. 9 

virtues of the people — uprightness, truth, courage, justice, 
chivalry, and hospitality — are purely moral. In the age 
of St. Patrick the Irish or Scotti had attained to a con- 
siderable degree of civilization: the laws were just and were 
justly administered; death was the punishment for murder, 
theft, and rape, but the families of the injured person 
might accept in atonement a fine or eric, whose amount 
was fixed by the Brehons. The law of inheritance was 
that known as gavelkind. All the sons inherited in equal 
shares, but except where there were no sons the daughters 
did not inherit. The land belonged to the nations or 
tribes that dwelt upon it, and was divided into three 
classes — common lands on which the whole clan had the 
right of pasturage, lands set apart for the benefit of the 
chief, and lands cultivated by individual members of the 
tribe, and for which the cultivators paid tribute, and the 
tenure of such land was hereditary. Seven kinds of grain 
were grown, but the people were in the main pastoral, and 
lived chiefly off the flesh and milk of their beasts. 

The sea-board inhabitants had acquired great skill in 
ship-building, and in the manufacture of weapons the 
Scotti nearly equalled the Romans, whose influence in 
Britain and Gaul was very beneficial to Erin. Among 
other arts learned from the Romans was that of building 
with the aid of mortar, and the presence of mortar in their 
construction proves the Irish round towers to have been 
built after the Roman colonization of Britain. The 
purpose of these round towers is not known. Some anti- 
quarians hold them to be Christian belfries, but they were 
probably connected with heathen rites of fire worship. 
There are in Ireland, as in England, many cromlechs and 
other Druidic remains of early temples and tombs built 
before the use of mortar was introduced ; among these are 
funeral piles so vast, and composed of such huge blocks 
of stone, that they can only be compared to the Egyptian 
pyramids. 

Stone and mortar were used only for buildings intended 
to last for ever; dwelling-houses were of wrought wood, 
usually oak. and consisted for the most part of one apart- 
ment with a dome-shaped roof, in the middle of which 



10 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

there was a space for the smoke to escape. But long 
before the days of St. Patrick, the houses of the great 
nobles contained seven or eight rooms, besides separate 
halls for feasting and for the various members of the 
chieftain's family. 

The under-dress of both sexes and all classes consisted 
of a tight-fitting garment — stocking, trouser, and vest in 
one. Over this, men of the upper class wore a long 
mantle, and women full-plaited skirts reaching below the 
knee; the dress itself was usually the dark color of the 
wool of a black sheep, and was trimmed with bands of 
bright dyed cloth, but color was an indication of rank, 
and yellow was probably the royal, as it was the favorite 
color of the early Irish. Shoes were merely a leather 
sandal tied across with a lacing of ribbon. The head- 
dress of the men was the pointed Phrygean cap; married 
women wore a linen coif, and girls their own hair braided 
in long plaits. Even in early times the goldsmithry of 
the Irish was very beautiful. 

The custom of fosterage was universal, and the respect 
and veneration paid to the foster parents continued through 
life. 

Fishing, shooting, riding, and the arts of agriculture 
and war, formed the basis of every Irishman's education; 
but the sons of noble houses were well instructed in the 
history of their country, and in music, singing, and verse- 
making. They were also taught to read and write the 
Celtic character, which consisted of an alphabet of seven- 
teen letters named after the seventeen trses indigenous to 
Erin. 

Girls were, of course, taught the domestic arts of spin- 
ning, weaving, cooking; but this last was a simple matter, 
for fish, flesh, and bread, all baked in the ashes, butter, 
milk, honey, and herbs, among which watercress and 
shamrock were the favorites, formed the diet of the Scotti, 
and their only strong drink was ale. 

So long as the summer lasted life was passed chiefly out 
of doors, but the winter evenings were beguiled with 
feasting and carousing, with chess and draughts, music, 
and the recitation of poems. The bards, accompanied by 



ST. PATRICK AN"D HIS TIMES. 11 

their harp-bearers, went from place to place singing the 
old legends, but also making such free use of their tongues 
in the invention of scandals and libels that from time to 
time they were punished by wholesale banishment. 

Such were the Scotti when Patrick came amongst them 
— a people in no sense barbarous; warlike, but not cruel, 
and civilized enough to have framed a code of laws which, 
in a modified form, sufficed their posterity till the seven- 
teenth century; a people devoted to the virtues of honesty, 
justice, and hospitality; a moral, poetic, and imaginative 
people, who were but loosely bound to the religion he was 
to bid them cast aside. 

The years of Patrick's captivity now stood him in good 
stead; he knew the language and the customs of the people 
he was to evangelize. During the fifteen years that had 
passed since his escape he had thought and prayed much 
over this mission. Harshness he knew must fail with this 
brave nation, who, easy to lead, were impossible to drive, 
and he resolved never to wound innocent prejudice or 
denounce harmless customs. His tact and knowledge, too, 
led him to address himself first to the chieftains, and at the 
outset of his mission he won the Leinster princes over to 
his side. These Leinster converts were made by twos and 
threes, but as the fame of the new faith spread converts 
came in by the thousand, and after fifteen years' evangel- 
ization the saint had to go over to Britain to bring over 
more clergy. He returned with thirty bishops, and then 
set to work preparing some of the native Christians for 
ordination, founding schools for their instruction in church 
doctrine and history and the Latin tongue. The conversion 
of Ireland was thus completed in the lifetime of the saint 
who is said to have died in his monastery at Saul at the age 
of 120 years (a.d. 253). The church which he founded 
soon became rich and powerful, and during the fifth and 
sixth centuries Ireland produced so many holy men and 
women that it was called "The Isle of Saints," and an old 
author tells us that "it was enough to be an Irishman, or 
even to have been in Ireland, to be considered holy." 



12 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE RISE AND FALL OF HOLINESS AND LEARNING. 

Until the close of the eighth century Christian Ireland 
was far more peaceful and prosperous than heathen Ireland 
had ever been. There were, it is true, wars between the 
different provinces, but not nearly to the same extent as 
in pagan times when war had been the occupation of the 
young nobles' courage and physical strength, the qualities 
they aspired to. But now a new ideal had been raised, and 
the youth of Ireland imitated no longer the "prowess of their 
forefathers, but an outcast God who had died a shameful 
death. The crown of martyrdom was not granted to these 
Irish saints, for almost alone among nations the conversion 
of Ireland bad been bloodless. But though they could not 
die for their Master, the best and noblest in the land de- 
voted their lives entirely to His service, and the better to 
accomplish this many of them retired to monasteries, where 
their time was passed in prayer, contemplation, learning, 
and good works, and also in the cultivation of the arts of 
building, sculpture, goldsmithry, and the illumination of 
manuscripts. Wars, invasions, and rebellions have swept 
over Ireland since those days, yet much of the art of the 
sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries remains to us. The 
churches of this early period are small, but very numerous, 
and near together. Of the date of the round towers anti- 
quaries are not agreed, but the beautifully sculptured stone 
crosses of which some few still remain, were undoubtedly 
the work of the Scotic monks. The ornamentation of 
these, of the illuminated manuscripts, and of the jewelled 
shrines and book covers of this period, all have the same 
characteristics, and are quite unlike the work of any other 
age and people, excepting the Anglo-Saxons, who were 
the pupils of these Irish monks. For beauty of design and 
minuteness of execution the Celtic manuscripts have never 



THE RISE AND FALL OF HOLINESS AND LEARNING. 13 

been excelled, and that they were very highly prized is 
proved by their having been kept in metal cases exquisitely 
wrought in gold, silver, and precious stones; but, after the 
Danish invasion, the cases proved a greater danger than 
defence, for the Northmen stole the books for the sake of 
their precious coverings, and in many cases the manu- 
scripts were wantonly destroyed, though in others they 
were contemptuously returned to their owners. One of the 
best known, and finest of these manuscripts, is the Book of 
Kells, now preserved in Trinity College, Dublin. It is 
attributed to St. Columba, a prince of the O'Donnell 
family, born in the year 521, and who, in the course of his 
life of 77 years, wrote and illuminated nearly 300 volumes, 
but who is still more widely known and honored as the 
apostle of the northern Picts. The prosperity of Erin, and 
its fame as a seat of learning and piety, increased yearly, 
till it was looked ivpon by the neighboring countries as a 
school for the education of their young nobles, but at the 
close of the eighth century an invasion of the Danes put 
an end to Ireland's prosperity 

English history tells us who were the Danes, and what 
the terror occasioned by their invasions. Under this com- 
prehensive title of Danes we include the Finn Galls or 
"AVhite Strangers" of Norway, as well as the Duvh or 
Black Galls of Denmark, with whom they often made 
common eause. 

Emigration was a necessity to Scandinavia — the poor, 
cold land could not support the fast increasing population, 
and the Northmen were driven for very lack of food at 
home to seek a livelihood elsewhere. Ireland and England 
both became the victims of their dauntless, pitiless courage: 
next they desolated the coasts of France and Spain, and 
at last carried their enterprise along, the shores of the 
Mediterranean Sea. 

No nation seems to have been able to withstand them; 
their magnificent barbaric strength, their boundless 
ferocity, and their undaunted courage made them the con- 
querors of all whom they attacked. 

In England, in Normandy, and later in Italy, they es- 
tablished themselves and founded dvnasties and settle- 



14 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

ments. With such an enemy Scotia of the eighth century 
was little fitted to contend. 

Had the old Fenian warriors still been in existence, and 
the whole island risen under their command against the 
invaders, the history of Ireland might have been different; 
but a country weakened by the clan system, so fatal to any 
spirit of nationality, and given over to the peaceful rule of 
monks and priests, was a certain prey to the determined 
Northmen, whose hosts were no sooner killed off by the 
despairing natives than they were replaced by fresh armies 
from the apparently unlimited resources of the Scandina- 
vian population. 

Danish warfare was carried on without thought of mercy. 
The invaders wished the island for their own possession, 
and were careless as to the fate of the natives; indeed, their 
ideas of the destiny of subject races seem to have run 
almost exclusively on the lines of extermination. 

The Irish made a desperate fight against the invaders, 
but after much bloodshed on both sides they were van- 
quished. It had been better for them had they slunk 
tamely into the bogs and morasses, for the Danes, in 
revenge for the losses they had received, took every oppor- 
tunity of degrading the natives. Danish soldiers were 
quartered on every Irish family, and the cast-off garments 
of the invaders was the only clothing permitted to Irishmen 
even of the highest class. This savage supremacy could 
only be maintained in an ignorant and disunited country, 
and knowing this the Danes prohibited the teaching of 
reading, writing, or any military art, and forbade public 
assemblies of any kind whatever. Church services, of 
course, came within this prohibition, and the clergy, being 
the best educated and most influential class, were the 
special objects of the hatred of the Northmen. 

For twelve years this miserable state of things endured, 
then Malachi, king of Meath, succeeded in driving the 
invaders from the country, but under pretext of peaceable 
colonization a number of Finn Galls obtained leave to settle 
on the east coast, where they founded the cities of Strang- 
ford, Oarlingford, and Wexford, and once possessed of 
these landing places the Northmen came over in greater 



THE RISE AND FALL OF HOLINESS A XI) LEARNING. 10 

numbers than before their expulsion. The early settlers 
resented these invasions almost as bitterly as the Scotti 
with whom they formed alliances, but these naturalized 
colonists were almost powerless against the hosts that re- 
peatedly descended like swarms of locusts upon the un- 
happy island. War followed war, disaster succeeded to 
disaster, colleges, monasteries, even churches had almost 
ceased to exist, and under the blighting influences of war 
and anarchy the country sank into a state of barbarism. 
The native chieftains finding that resistance led to nothing 
but outrage, submitted for the most part to the Danish 
dominion, and paid tribute to the invader. Among those 
who were in this inglorious position were the petty princes 
of South Minister, of the Dalcassian and Eoghanite fam- 
ilies. But when Brian Dal-Oas succeeded his father in 
954 he determined never to pay tribute, and for long he 
carried on a solitary guerilla warfare against the Danes of 
Limerick and Waterford. He met with some success, and 
persuaded his brother Mahon to join him in giving battle 
to the Danes at Sulcoit, in Tipperary. To the surprise 
of all, the Danes were beaten, and Limerick fell into the 
hands of Mahon, who was murdered at the instigation of 
the Danish chieftain of the city. To avenge this wrong, 
Brian renewed the war, and after some fighting became 
king of the whole of Minister. He was then joined by 
Malachi, king of Meath, and Ard-Righ of Erin, and the 
allied armies routed the Danes from Dublin city. But 
Brian, like Alfred of England, was something more than 
a successful general: he was a great ruler. Personally 
ambitious, he had resolved to die Ard-Righ of Erin, 
although he did not belong to those families who alone 
claimed the right to reign. By each of his several marriages 
he connected himself with the various reigning families 
in Ireland, and the marriages of his children were all 
planned with the same view. But he did not let his own 
gain blind him to the good of the country; he revised the 
laws and enacted new ones; he forced the Danes to restore 
the church property they had destroyed, he re-established 
schools, raised fortresses, built and mended roads, con- 
structed bridges, and returned those lands which the Danes 



16 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

had usurped to their rightful owners. He also decreed 
that all branches of the Scoto-Milesian race should take as 
a surname the name of the founder or some illustrious 
member of their clan, with the prefix 0' or Mac, the 
son or descendant of. Thus the descendants of Niall 
became O'Neill, of Concobar or Coner O'Connor, and 
of Brian himself O'Brien. Brian, having married for 
his third wife Gormley, sister to Maelmurra, king of 
Leinster, and having united his daughter to the Danish 
king of Dublin, felt himself strong enough to dejoose 
Malachi and declare himself Ard-Righ of Erin, and 
he then clemauded and obtained tribute from the Ulster 
kings. His victorious wars with the Danes had been ex- 
pensive, and to raise revenue he revived the obsolete tribute 
of cattle, which centuries ago had been levied upon Leinster. 
This Boromean tribute, deriving its name from "Bo," a 
cow, had been exacted in revenge for a wrong done by the 
Leinster king, and even in early times had been very ir- 
regularly paid, but its re-enactment after a lapse of 322 
years was an oppression that neither King Maelmurra nor 
his sister, Brian's wife, could forgive, and which brought 
forth more serious results than Brian's nickname of 
"Boiroimhe" or Boru. For long the fire smoldered, but at 
length an insulting word from Brian caused it to burst into 
flame, and determined on revenge the Leinster king allied 
himself with the Danes, and sent an express to Denmark 
for an army. Twelve thousand Danes and four thousand 
Norsemen obeyed the summons, and these, with the Lein- 
stermen and the Danes of Dublin, made a formidable army. 
But Brian, though eighty years old, had still strength to 
organize an army, and between Munster, Connaught, and 
Meath he raised a force of 30,000 men. He was past fight- 
ing, and the command was entrusted to his eldest son, but 
throughout the march the old leader headed his people, 
and when the armies met at Clontarf he exhorted his troops 
to remember that their's was the cause of freedom and 
fatherland, and then in a tent near by he stood watching 
the conflict. From eight in the morning till five in the 
afternoon of Good Friday of the year 1014 the battle raged, 
but after a loss of 10,000 men, including the traitorous 



THE INVASION". 17 

Maelmurra, the Danes and Leinster men were utterly 
routed. But Brian did not survive that day; he and four 
of his sons and his young grandson fell with 7000 of their 
troops, and the Minister tribe that Brian raised from ob- 
scurity he almost exterminated by his wars, for of all the 
brave host that left Minister only 850 men returned. Brian's 
son Donagh, succeeded him as king of Minister, but the 
Ard-Righ-ship was claimed by Malachi II. , who ruled over 
Ireland for nine years. But the sacred line of the Ard- 
Righs had been broken; Brian's success inspired many a 
petty prince to contend for the supremacy, and after the 
death of Malachi II. no Irish king ever held undisputed 
sway. The law that might is right became more and more 
recognized, and the strength of the country was exhausted 
by petty wars till, in 1172, the troubled and disunited 
country fell an easy prey to the ambition of Henry II. of 
England. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE INVASION. 

The invasion of Ireland by the Normans was the natural 
outcome of their conquest of Britain. The Danes, who had 
already done so much to ruin the prosperity of Erin, were 
now to make another attempt on her liberty by the circui- 
tous route of Normandy and Britain. Henry, duke of 
Anjou and Normandy, and king of England, resolved to 
add Ireland to the list of his unwieldy possessions, and the 
island was in a state to tempt the invader. The centuries 
of strife against the Danes, and the anarchy and self-seeking 
which had followed Brian's usurpation of the Ard-Righ- 
ship had destroyed all spirit of nationality, for each chief 
struggling to be master saw in his neighbors only rivals 
and possible enemies. The country was in that demoralized 
and disorganized condition which is the inevitable outcome 
of prolonged civil war. Learning had declined, and Chris- 
tianity shared the common moral degradation. The na- 
tional Church was in schism from the Church of f Rome, 
both as to the observance of Easter and in permitting the 

2 



18 IEISH HISTORY POE ENGLISH EEADEES. 

marriage of the secular clergy — indeed, the marriage bond 
was of the loosest. Henry II. was too astute a personage to 
fail to take advantage of this degeneration; dismal accounts 
of the heretical condition of the Irish Church reached 
England through the Danish settlers, who, acknowl- 
edging the supremacy of Eome, received their orders not 
from the Irish but the English archbishop. So, armed with 
an account of Irish heresy, Henry sought the papal sanc- 
tion to invade the island. In those days the Pope was 
commonly held to be the suzerain of all islands, and acting 
on this prerogative Adrian IV. issued a bull authorizing 
Henry to undertake the conquest "to enlarge the bounds 
of the Church, to restrain the progress of vices, to correct 
the manners of its people, to plant virtue and to increase 
the Christian religion, to subject the people to laws, to ex- 
tirpate vicious customs, and to enforce the payment of 
Peter's pence.' 5 But the Norman barons were found to be 
so strongly opposed to the project that the bull was laid 
aside, and for a time the scheme was abandoned. 

At the time of Henry's accession, Turlogh O'Connor 
was Ard-Eigh of Erin, and at his death, in 1166, was suc- 
ceeded by his son Eoderic O'Connor, the last Milesian king 
of Ireland. The prince of Leinster was Dermid M'Mur- 
rough, and Breffny was governed by O'Eourke. Unhap- 
pily for Ireland, Dermid fell in love with O'Eourke's wife, 
and persuaded her to elope with him. To avenge this out- 
rage and recover the woman, O'Eourke declared war on 
Leinst3r, and the Ard-Eigh took up his quarrel. Dermid 
tried in vain to raise an army; lax as was the marriage 
bond in Ireland, the Leinstermen refused to fight for a 
licentious old man of sixty, who had eloped with a woman 
already past her fortieth year. Bat Dermid, thus driven 
to bay, did not hesitate to fly to Henry and ask help of the 
dreaded Normans, nor to offer to pay for their services by 
doing homage for his kingdom. Henry was then in Aqui- 
taine, and was too much engaged in a French war to grant 
any assistance beyond letters to certain Norman nobles 
in England, authorizing them to take up Dermid's cause. 
Thus accredited, the Leinster king went to Britain, and, 
by bribes and promises, persuaded Eichard Clare, earl of 



THE INVASION. 19 

Pembroke, and a group of Norman-Welsh barons, to espouse 
his cause. Of these Norman- Welsh noblemen, the most 
conspicuous were Maurice Fitz Gerald, founder of the 
family of Fitz Gerald, Robert Fitz Stephen, Raymond le 
Gros, and Ilervey Montmorres. The fortunes of these 
gentlemen were of the kind that may be bettered but can- 
not be made worse, and for various bribes and considerations 
they agreed to raise armies, and invade Ireland in the fol- 
lowing spring. In the meantime, Dermid retired to ins 
monastery at Fells, where in May, the news was brought 
him that the Norman fleet was on the Wexford coast. 
The invaders were commanded by Fitz Stephen, who for 
years had been a state prisoner in Wales, and who had 
been released only on promise to go to Ireland and never 
return thence. He and Dermid laid siege to the Danish 
town of Wexford; they took it, and then began devastat- 
ing the surrounding country; but by this time O'Connor, 
who had raised a formidable army, forced the invaders to 
come to terms, and a treaty was drawn up by which Wex- 
ford was given to Fitz Stephen, and Leinster restored to 
Dermid, on condition of his doing homage to O'Connor 
and promising never again to call the Normans to his aid. 
But the treaty was no sooner signed than Fitz Stephen's 
half-brother, Fitz Gerald, landed in Wexford in command 
of a large force, and Dermid, after very little hesitation, 
broke the conditions of his treaty by joining the invaders 
and leading them to Dublin. In August of this same year, 
Richard Clare (nicknamed Strongbow) also fulfilled his 
promise of coming to Dermid's aid; he had been bribed 
to come over by promises of the hand of Dermid's beautiful 
daughter Eva, and of succession to the throne of Leinster 
after Dermid's death; but, the Irish kings being elected by 
their clans from certain families, Dermid had no power to 
dispose of his crown, which could not be inherited by a 
foreigner. So long as the Normans confined their devas- 
tations to the Danish towns and the east coast, O'Connor 
ignored their ill-conduct, but when they marched toward 
Meath, he sent a message to Dermid, telling him that if 
he persisted in violating the treaty, the head of his son 
Arthur, who was held as hostage, should pay for it. The 



20 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

amiable parent replied that he was indifferent to his son's 
fate, and should act as he pleased. Poor Arthur's end is 
unknown, but the winter soon terminated the hostilities, 
and in the spring Dermid died miserably, "as his sins 
deserved." Strongbow now found how he had been 
tricked; he asserted his claim to the throne of Leinster, 
but every Irishman rose up against him, and, after many 
defeats, of which the most famous is that of Thurles, 
where 1,700 Normans fell, Strongbow and the remnant of 
his army were blockaded in Wexford and Waterford. 

The news that Strongbow was contending for the crown 
of Leinster awakened Henry to the fact that the earl was 
making war on his own account, probably with the inten- 
tion of setting up an independent kingdom in Ireland. 
He therefore commanded all the Normans to return to 
England at once, and he severely upbraided Strongbow for 
the devastation he had caused; but a promise to put all 
the places he held in Ireland into the king's power ensured 
the earl's pardon, and Henry now produced the bull of 
Adrian, set sail for Ireland, and on St. Luke's day in Oc- 
tober, 1171, this last and greatest Norman force landed at 
Waterford. The Fitz Geralds, Fitz Stephens, and other 
Norman- Welsh settlers hastened to do homage to their 
sovereign, and the southern Irish chiefs, tired of war, 
divided by petty strifes, alarmed by the strength of the 
invading force, and overawed by the papal bull, followed 
their example. M'Carthy, king of Cork, was the first to 
come in, and then one by one all the surrounding princes 
made their submission; but Eoderic O'Connor and Henry 
tacitly agreed to let each other alone, and the O'Neills and 
O'Donnels of Ulster then, and for many hundred years, 
refused to bend the knee to a foreign prince. 

Henry at once set to work on a social reformation; he 
tried to establish the feudal land system and the Koman 
method of government, and his papal bull brought the 
clergy to his side; but this work of organization was brought 
to an abrupt close by a summons from the papal legate 
commanding him to render an account of Becket's murder, 
so in April, 1172, he left Ireland, leaving Strongbow gov- 
ernor. The greater part of Leinster and Munster he 



THREE CENTURIES OF NORMAN RULE. 21 

divided between about ten Anglo-Norman families, but 
these grants of land were purely nominal, and in many 
cases the settlers were unable to dislodge the clans already 
in possession. This weak and wavering Norman power 
extended only to the Pale, a district whose boundaries 
varied with the relative strength of Norman and Celt, but 
which was supposed to include the counties of Dublin, 
Kildare, Meath, and Uriel or Louth, and the cities and 
neighborhoods of Cork, AVaterford, and Limerick; but till 
the time of James I. the English power w r as seldom great 
enough to keep all these districts, much less to subdue the 
outlying country. 



CHAPTER V. 

THREE CENTURIES OF NORMAN RULE. 

The Normans had subdued the "proud Saxon" by a 
course of rigorous oppression, and they thought to govern 
the Celts by the same means. The inhabitants of Britain 
had yielded to their Norman invaders just as their pre- 
decessors had already submitted to the conquering Roman 
and Dane. But the invasion of Ireland was carried out 
in a very different manner, and produced very different 
results. 

The Anglo-Saxons had been thoroughly conquered, and 
had been forced to entire submission. There was no 
doubt as to which was the victorious race. The dominant 
Northmen had enforced their legislation on the natives, 
and were powerful enough to carry out their policy. 
There had been no intermission in the administration of 
this iron Norman rule; no moment when rebellion had 
had a chance of success. There was a resident king and 
a court, and after a few generations the Normans had 
grown to consider England their own country; common 
interests had grown up between the two races, till the 
Anglo-Saxons and the Normans gradually lost their an- 
tagonistic and distinct nationality, and formed together 
the English nation, 



22 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

But in Ireland matters were very different; the Norman 
invasion had only resulted in a partial conquest of the 
eastern and southern provinces, and for a period of more 
than four hundred years the western and northern parts 
of the island failed to make even a nominal submission. 
The country was in a perpetual state of strife — first the 
English and then the Irish gaining some advantage, for 
there were two distinct powers in Ireland, two codes of 
law, two rival interests, two, and in later times three, hos- 
tile races. 

The Norman lords settled down in the Pale with the 
intention of quickly becoming masters of the whole island. 
Henry had presented them with vast estates, but to obtain 
these was quite another matter. In the first place, the 
Irish did not understand what was expected of them. 
The feudal system of land tenure was incomprehensible to 
them. The land of Ireland had always belonged to the 
people — the territory of Leinster to the Leinstermen, of 
Minister to the Minister clans. The kings could not give 
away or sell any part of it, nor did Irish conquerors take 
the lands of the clans they overcame; the same people 
went on living on their old estates, only they were ruled 
over and paid tribute to the conquering chief. Individual 
property in land was no more dreamed of than property 
in light or air. The Normans had other ideas; where 
they could they dispossessed the natives, and took the 
land for their own. They bought and sold it at pleasure, 
sometimes allowing the natives to become tenants-at-will, 
but the Irish naturally resisted the new order of things, 
and lost no opportunity of harrowing and turning out 
the new-comers. 

Then arose the difficulty of laws. The Irish were gov- 
erned by Brehon laws, which must have seemed ridicu- 
lously mild to the Normans. But as Irishmen who 
murdered Englishmen were tried by English law and 
hanged, and Englishmen who murdered Irishmen were 
tried by Brehon law and let off with a fine, both races 
learned that there may be a considerable difference be- 
tween law and justice. 

Still, despite the differences of race and law, despite the 



THKEE CENTURIES OF NORMAN RULE. 23 

irritations caused by the forays of the Norman oarons, 
despite the brutal retaliation of the natives, despite the 
hatred which the two peoples at first felt for one another, 
the Normans gradually adopted the manners and customs 
of the Irish, and that fusion of races which had had so 
happy an effect in England began to be enacted across the 
water. But the proportion of colonists was here much 
smaller, the Irish learned little from the Norman though 
these swiftly "degenerated" into "mere Irish," and it was 
clear that if left to themselves, the "Irish enemy" would 
soon absorb the settlers. 

This was, indeed, a terrible disaster, for by this degener- 
ation the "kings of England and lords of Ireland" were 
in danger of losing what little power they had in Ireland. 
And it was, therefore, deemed necessary to stimulate the 
old race hatred in order to keep the two peoples apart. 
For this end a law was passed in the reign of Edward III. 
known as the statute of Kilkenny, by which it was made 
high treason for the colonists to marry with, bring up, 
foster, or stand sponsor to any of the Irish; and any Eng- 
lishman using an Irish name, wearing an Irish dress, 
speaking the Irish language, following the Irish custom of 
growing his mustache, or of riding without a saddle, had 
all his possessions sold in atonement for the crime, or, if 
he were a poor man, was condemned to imprisonment for 
life; and it was also made criminal for English settlers to 
be governed by Brehon law. 

These laws did not increase the love of the two peoples, 
and their obvious injustice was not calculated to make 
either natives or settlers a law-abiding people. But the 
Irish had not even the choice of being ruled by English 
law, for only the five royal families of the O'Neills, the 
O'Connors, the O'Briens, the OWIelaghlins, and the 
M'Murroughs (now Kavanaghs), commonly known as 
the, "five bloods," were allowed to plead in an English 
court. Had the Pale been a hard and fast line, the two 
nations might perhaps have gone on pretty comfortably, 
the English within the Pale and the Irish without, but 
the barons of the Pale were a set of lawless marauders and 
half their subsistence was drawn from forays across the 



24 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

borders, which forays were followed by risings of the sur- 
rounding Irish clans, who sometimes drove the settlers 
back into the very walls of Dublin. To suppress these 
incursions, the hateful customs of "Coyne and Livery," 
or free quarters, was resorted to. Nothing breeds ill-will 
so quickly as this abuse; from time to time it has been 
resorted to by the governors of Ireland, and has invariably 
produced misery, hatred, and rebellion. The custom was 
originally Irish, for the Fenian heroes of the olden times 
lived during the six winter months at free quarters on the 
people: but so unbearable was felt the obligation to maintain 
even the friend and protector that the nation had risen in 
revolt and overthrown the Fenian power. But who shall 
describe the burden, the hateful charge which was now 
laid upon each family? A soldier to pay and lodge, food 
to be found for him and his horse; a stranger and an 
enemy, always in the best seat by the hearth, always watch 
ing and spying -on the unhappy household. Every one 
was in the same case, each household had its unwelcome 
guest to feed and care for. There he was, policeman, sol- 
dier, master, spy; a being of such superior race that if he 
married the daughter or stood sponsor to the baby of his 
unwilling host, he must die for his sin; or if he followed 
the customs or spoke the language of those who gave him 
food and shelter, all he had was taken from him or he was 
thrown into prison for life. He dared not love the people 
he lived with, dared not speak to them, or live otherwise 
than an enemy — a hateful life for him and them. 

In many cases the soldiers proved their superiority by 
laying waste the little farms, despoiling the gardens, and 
ill-treating the natives; but in others, despite the threat- 
ened imprisonment and traitors' death, they greiv mous- 
tachios, rode without saddles, learned to speak Erse, and 
were even sufficiently depraved to marry the women. 
But many of the baser sort of Irish thinking it but lost 
labor to work to keep the enemy, and caring nothing for 
a home whose comfort and privacy were destroyed by the 
presence of an unfriendly stranger, nor for land whose 
produce was too often ruined by the malice or rough horse 
play of the soldiers, threw up their homes, left their land 



THE GERALDOTES. 25 

waste, and took to an idle life of begging by the road side. 
Still, as time went on, the laws became less and less strictly 
obeyed; saddles which wore out were not replaced, and first 
one, then another spoke Erse, or forgot to shave his upper 
lip, till in the time of Henry VI. the statute of Kilkenny 
had to be re-enforced, and a new law passed actually re- 
warding any Englishman who beheaded any "mere Irish- 
man whom he met going to or coining from robbing or 
stealing." It is probable that the Irishmen did not pub- 
licly announce when they were on a robbing expedition, so 
it is difficult to understand how the English could be 
aware of their intentions, and the Irishman, moreover, had 
no chance of proving his innocence, as the execution took 
place on the spot, and it is likely that many private quar- 
rels were legally revenged in this manner, for, in addition 
to getting rid of his enemy, the murderer made a comfort- 
able little sum of money, levied in fines of pence and 
farthings on the district in which the execution took place. 
It has often been stated that religious differences are the 
chief causes of the misunderstanding between English and 
Irish, yet never was there more oppression, race-hatred, 
and ill-will than in the centuries before the Reformation, 
when all professed the same creed; but so great was the 
mutual dislike that each people built and worshipped in 
their own churches, erected and retired to their own mon- 
asteries as exclusively as though some great difference of 
faith kept them apart, yet though this carefully fostered 
race-hatred and a constant influx of new settlers, kept most 
of the colonists from "degenerating,'- certain of the Anglo- 
Xorman families threw in their lot with the natives, and 
by the time of Henry YII. had become "more Irish than 
the Irish." 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE GERALDIXES. 

Never, since the invasion, had the power of England 
been so weak in Ireland as it became at the time of the 
accession of Henry VII. The Wars of the Roses, followed 



26 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

by the short and turbulent reigns of Edward V. and Rieft- 
ard III., had, during the last four reigns, given the Eng- 
lish enough to do without thinking much about Irish 
affairs. The Pale was now reduced to Dublin, Meath, 
Louth, and Kildare, and the "Irish enemy" extorted trib- 
ute from the settlers. 

Still, at the beginning of his reign, Henry VII. paid 
little attention to the state of Ireland, though the inhabi- 
tants were more disunited than ever. There were Yorkists 
and Lancastrians among both the old Irish and the colon- 
ists. There were old Irish who cared for neither red rose 
nor white; old Irish who acknowldged the English king, 
and old Irish who ignored his very existence; Anglo-Irish, 
as Ihe original settlers were now called, who hated the old 
Irish; new settlers, who hated both old and Anglo-Irish, 
and Anglo-Irish who were more Irish than the Irish. Of 
these last none had more thoroughly "degenerated" than 
the great family of Fitzgerald, decendants of that Eitz 
Gerald who landed at Waterford soon after the treaty be- 
tween Dermid M'Murrough and Boderic O'Connor. The 
Fitzgeralds had now two peerages in the family — the earl- 
dom of Desmond and that of Kildare. They and the But- 
lers were the most influential of the Anglo-Irish families. 
The Butlers were Lancastrians, both branches of the Fitz- 
geralds Yorkists, and at the time of Henry VII, ? s acces- 
sion Gerald Fitzgerald, earl of Kildare, was governor of 
Ireland. Henry was far too wise to depose Kildare., he re- 
stored to Thomas Butler, earl of Ormonde, those lands of 
which he had been deprived under Edward IV., but other- 
wise took little notice of the Butlers; of their support he 
was pretty sure, but the Yorkist Fitzgeralds needed concil- 
iation. Henry felt that their favor would greatly strength- 
en his power in Ireland, yet he had so little faith in Kil- 
dare's loyalty that in 148(3 he invited him to pay a visit to 
London. This honor Kildare prudently declined; he 
knew that such visits were apt to end in free lodgings in 
the Tower of London, and moreover he had designs of his 
own. 

The mysterious fate of the child- 'king, Edward V., and 
his brother, the duke of York, left the people uncertain as 



THE GEEALDLXES. 27 

to what had become. of them. Many refused to believe 
they had been murdered in the Tower, and were willing to 
receive any prince who should declare that he was the true 
king. There was, also, Prince Edward, earl of Warwick, 
who was the Yorkist heir to the throne. Edward was re- 
ported to be kept a close prisoner in the Tower, but no one 
had seen him there who could say whether he really were 
there or no. 

It was easy to persuade a people as remote from London 
as the Irish that the prince was not a prisoner, and for this 
purpose Lambert Simnel, the son of an Oxford bootmaker, 
a boy about the young prince's age, was trained to act the 
part of earl of Warwick, and was then taken to Ireland in 
that character. The people were delighted with him. 
The young prince was so regal, so gracious, and so charm- 
ing that the masses received him without a wavering or 
doubt, but it is difficult to believe that Kildare and the 
other nobles of the Pale were equally convinced; they may 
have been deceived by the urbanity of the cobbler's son, 
but if so they cannot have made very searching inquiries 
into his past. 

In vain Henry exhibited the real Edward in London; 
the English who saw him believed, but the Irish rebels 
thought the unseen English prisoner the impostor, not the 
courteous youth whose manners were so regally convincing. 
Margaret, duchess of Burgundy, sister of Edward IV., and 
aunt to the real earl of Warwick, was the chief promoter 
of the plot, and sent over 2,000 German veterans to assist 
the rebels. Their aid was little needed in Irelend, for the 
Yorkist nobles and all the people of the Pale were wild 
about the little prince, who was solemnly crowned king in 
the presence of Kildare and other nobles, lay and ecclesi- 
astical. 

The crown, an iron one, was taken from the head of the 
statue of the Blessed Virgin, near Dame's Gate, and when 
the ceremony was over the new king was placed on the 
shoulders of a gigantic Anglo-Irishman, named D'Arcy, 
and carried in triumph to Dublin Castle. Henry treated 
this rebellion, usurpation, and coronation with wise con- 
tempt; the whole thing was a bubble that must quickly 



28 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

burst: but Simnel's adherents, not satisfied with his Irish 
success, now determined to win for him the English crown. 
We must, in justice to them, remember that most of his 
adherents firmly believed him to be the earl of Warwick, 
and also that within the last tweuty years the English 
crown had been won live times by violence, and that Ed- 
ward Plantagenet, earl of Warwick, really had a sort of 
claim to the throne. Simnei, with his German and Anglo- 
Irish army, embarked for Lancashire, where they were met 
by the English and utterly defeated, with the loss of half 
their number, and Ireland's king, with humiliating len- 
iency, was made the royal scullion. Kildare and the other 
rebels wrote to crave the king's pardon, which was immed- 
iately granted; he even retained Kildare as lord deputy; 
and, indeed, throughout the whole affair Henry's good 
sense was admirable. Those of the rebels who had been 
killed in battle were gone beyond punishment, and the 
best penalty that could be inflicted on the survivors was to 
make them see what contemptible fools they had been. 
He did not even permit them the dignity of suffering. 
The exposure of this plot, and the ridiculous part the 
rebels had been made to play should have sickened the 
Anglo-Irish of imprisoned princes, but when five years 
later the duchess of Burgundy sent over a supposed duke 
of York, he also was welcomed as the rightful heir. It 
must be conceded that this new claimant for the throne 
was more mysterious than the son of the Oxford shoe- 
maker. He is supposed to have been a native of Tourney, 
in Flanders, named Peter Osbeck, but is better known as 
Perkin Warbeck, and he really resembled Edward IV. so 
greatly that many persons believed him to have been a nat- 
ural son of that monarch. In the meantime, Kildare had 
been deposed from the deputyship, and Fitzsimons, arch- 
bishop of Dublin, reigned in his stead. It could never be 
proved against Kildare that he took part in the Warbeck 
rebellion^ but many members of the Fitzgerald family, in- 
cluding the earl of Desmond, openly declared for the pre- 
tender, who with the aid of Desmond laid siege to Water- 
ford. 

Henry was now really alarmed at the state of Ireland, 



THE GERALDIXES. 29 

for he himself was not sure whether or no Warbeck weru 
the duke of York — so he sent over Sir Edward Poyning 
with a force to quell the rebellion. This was soon done, 
and Poyning then assembled a Parliament, wherein the 
odious statute of Kilkenny was re-enforced, save only that 
part relating to the use of the Irish language and the cus- 
tom of riding without a saddle, both of which were now so 
general that it was hopeless to try to prevent them. Here, 
too, was passed the famous act called after the deputy, 
"Poyning's Law," and which was not repealed till 1782. 
Poyning' s act provided that henceforward no parliament 
should "be held in Ireland "until the chief governor and 
council had certified to the king, under the great seal, as 
well the causes and considerations as the acts they designed 
to pass, and till the same should be approved by the king 
and council. " An act passed by the Irish parliament could 
not in future become law till it had been sent to and ap- 
proved by the English privy council, whose members might 
revise and alter it as they thought fit; it was then returned 
to the Irish house, and here it might receive no further al- 
teration. The bills often returned altered beyond all recog- 
nition, yet they must be passed exactly as they came from 
England, or altogether rejected. Thus was the Irish par- 
liament reduced to a nullity. Bills of attainder were also 
passed at this time against the earl of Kildare, his brother 
James, and others suspected of sympathy with Warbeck, 
Desmond had already made his submission, and had left 
his son in London as a hostage for good behavior, but Kil- 
dare was sent to an English prison, and his wife, over- 
whelmed with grief and horror at the ghastly fate she feared 
for her husband, died. Her fears were groundless, for 
when Kildare was at length alloived to plead before the king, 
the simplicity and straight-forwardness of his manner won 
for him the friendship of Henry, who saw at once that such 
a man would be as useful as a friend as he had been dan- 
gerous as an enemy. 

A long string of indictments were brought against the 
Geraldine, and many witnesses were called to prove his ini- 
quities. One of the most serious charges was that, to re- 
venge himself on the archbishop of Cashel, who was a sup- 



30 IRISH HISTORY FOR EKGLISH READERS. 

porter of the Butlers, he had set fire to the cathedral. Kil- 
dare disarmed his enemies by naively pleading that "he 
would never have done it had he not thought the archbishop 
was within. " There was a general laugh at this novel plea, 
and Henry, saying the earl needed time to prepare his de- 
fence, gave him leave to choose his own counsel. "I doubt 
if I will be allowed to choose the good fellow I wish to se- 
lect/ 7 said Kildare, thoughtfully. The king, nothing 
suspecting, gave him his hand in token of good faith. 
"Marry," cried the irrepressible rebel, "I can see no better 
man in England than your highness, and I will choose no 
other." Like many reserved persons, Henry was more shy 
than proud, and, to the surprise of the assembled court, 
was delighted with the shameless earl of Kildare. It was 
easy to see which way the tide was setting. . The Butlers, 
earl Ormonde, and the aggrieved archbishop whose cathe- 
dral had been burned in the hope that he was within, were 
desperate. Was this traitor to escape through sheer impu- 
dence ? ' ; All Ireland could not govern the earl of Kildare, ' ' 
they cried. "Then," said the king, "the earl of Kildare 
shall govern all Ireland;" and true to his word, Henry 
sent him back as lord deputy, with increased power and the 
new title of lord lieutenant, and with Elizabeth St. John, 
Henry's cousin, for a wife. This policy answered well; the 
authority of the crown was maintained within the Pale as it 
had not been for two generations, and Kildare lost no op- 
portunity of repressing the native chiefs and Irish rebels. 
He had become more English than the English. Among 
the many petty wars carried on under him was one which, 
though it began in a private quarrel between the Fitzgeralds 
and Ulick Mac AVilliam (Bourke), developed into a terrible 
struggle between the tribes of the northeast and those of 
the southwest. The battle of Knocktow turned the scale 
in favor of the Fitzgeralds, and sho.ved the Irish that 
henceforward the side of England would be the side of vic- 
tory. 

In 1509 Henry VII. died, and was succeeded by his son 
Henry VIII. The young king, satisfied with the manage- 
ment of the Pale, left it in the hands of Kildare, and when, 
four years later, the deputy died, his son Gerald was ap- 



THE GEEALDI2TES. Si 

pointed in his stead. The young earl did not profit by his 
father's experience; his conduct was so extraordinary that 
three times lie was deposed and sent to London, the last 
time in 1534. when his rivals, the Butlers, accused him 
with apparent truth of such arbitrary and senseless acts of 
injustice and cruelty that they can only be accounted for 
by madness. When the earl left Dublin, his son Thomas 
was chosen to continue the government. A less suitable 
appointment could hardly have been made; Thomas was 
only twenty years of age, inexperienced, brave, headstrong, 
passionately attached to his father, whose deposition he re- 
sented hotly. The earl, well aware of his son's character, 
implored him to be prudent, but he might as well have 
pleaded with the raging sea, for soon after he reached Eng- 
land his son was deceived by a false report that the earl had 
been beheaded. Without waiting to inquire into the truth 
of the rumor, Thomas, mad with grief and rage, presented 
himself, at the head of a hundred and forty followers, before 
the council. Striding up to the council table he threw 
down his sword of office, and in a loud voice declared war 
against Henry VIII., king of England. The lad, for he 
was nothing more, was thoroughly in earnest — the entreaties 
of his friends that he would beg pardon for his rashness 
were of no avail; in his anger he feared neither the death 
he must bring upon himself, or the ruin he had called down 
on his relations. He and his hotheaded followers laid waste 
the district of Fingal, and besieged Dublin Castle, whither 
archbishop Allen, his father's great enemy, had fled. The 
prelate soon escaped, and embarked on a vessel which 
unfortunately stranded at Clontarf, where the archbishop 
fell into the hands of the insurgents and was slajn, and for 
this sacrilege Thomas was excommunicated. The earl, 
hearing of his son's miseries, died in London of a broken 
heart, and young Fitzgerald, hunted by the royal army 
into the fastnesses of Munster, surrendered himself on 
condition that his life should be spared. He now heard 
how he had been deceived, and willingly went to London 
to crave the king's pardon — a sadder and a wiser man. 

To celebrate his forgiveness and the close of the insur- 
rection, the English general, Gray, who had married Kil- 



32 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

dare's sister, invited Thomas's five uncles to a banquet, 
and while they were feasting they were all treacherously 
seized, taken to London, and thrown into the Tower, where, 
to their dismay, they found their pardoned nephew a pris- 
oner like themselves. They were kept prisoners till the fol- 
lowing year, when all six were hanged as traitors at Tyburn, 
and the Kildare estates declared forfeited. But a younger 
brother of Thomas was saved by his aunt from the venge- 
ance of Henry VIII., and in the time of Queen Mary, lie 
recovered the title and part of the estates of the earl of Kil- 
dare. 



CHAPTER VII. 

HOW SHANE O'NEILL HELD ULSTER. 

The power of England greatly increased in Ireland dur- 
ing the reigns of Henry VII. and Henry VIII. The Pale 
was enlarged, and its inhabitants no longer paid tribute to 
the native kings. Round the Border the Celtic chiefs were 
resigning their lands, and getting them back under letters 
patent with new titles, and the outlying leaders began to in- 
quire what was gained by this. They learned in reply, that 
if they held the land by English law their "title" would be 
recognized by the English king, who would not give it to 
others, as he would do in the event of conquest if they held 
it by Brehon law; and also that by English law the land 
would belong to the chief himself, that his children would 
inherit it, that he could sell it, and evict his clansmen, or 
force their obedience by threats of eviction — in fact, that 
tribute would be rent, and the land, instead of belonging 
to the people, would become the property of the chieftain. 
Property has such great attractions that we cannot wonder 
that the idea of owning the land was pleasant to the Irish 
chiefs. They persuaded themselves that it was quite un- 
necessary to explain the change to the clansmen, who need 
know nothing about their new position till it was too old a 
tale to quarrel over. The O'Neills had never yet submitted 
to the English power, but in the time of Henry VIII. Lame 
Con, who was then "The O'Neill," resigned his people's 



HOW SHANK O'NEILL HELD ULSTER. 33 

lauds, and received them back with the title of earl of Tir- 
o-wen or Tyrone, while his eldest, though base-born, son 
Matthew was declared his heir, and. created baron of Dun- 
gannon. Con did not explain to his clansmen how he had 
wronged them, but his eldest legitimate son Shane, or John, 
took the matter into his own hands. He was indignant 
that Matthew was made heir, though illegitimacy did not 
affect the Irish law of inheritance, but there was some 
doubt as to his being Con's son at all. But beyond this 
sense of wrong and thwarted ambition, young O'Neill had 
a genuine hatred of the new order of things, and scorned 
the brand new letters patent title of earl of Tyrone. It was 
enough for him to be The O'Neill, king of Ulster, as his an- 
cestors had been well nigh 2,000 years. So long had the 
O'Neill's held the land for the people by right of the 
sword, and while he had a voice in the matter so they 
should keep it. Shane was not the man to keep his views 
to himself; he told the clansmen how they were being 
cheated, and by sheer force of will he brought round his 
lather to his side, so that Matthew, trembling for his in- 
heritance, had the old man imprisoned in Dublin. But 
the clansmen, fearing to lose their lands, had the offensive 
Matthew murdered with Shane's connivance, and when soon 
afterwards Con died, Shane was elected "The O'Neill." 

The territory of the O'Connors and the O'Moores — the 
counties of Leix and Oifaly, now Queen's County and 
King's County — were at this time confiscated by Henry 
VIII. 'Moore and O'Connor were seized and sent 
prisoners to England, their tribes ejected, and English 
settlers "planted" on their land. This was the first 
attempt at forfeiture that had been made for centuries; 
but from this time confiscation became the ruling passion 
of the English sovereigns, and in succession nearly all 
Ireland has been planted several times. "When either 
soldiers or nobles or illegitimate children had a claim on 
an English ruler which it was impossible to satisfy at home, 
a piece of Irish land wai taken and liberally bestowed on 
the claimant, on condition of his planting it vrith English 
subjects. No one cared what became of the outcasts, who 
made desperate resistance to the injustice. 

3 



34 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

The plantation of Leix and Offaly was but the thin end 
of the wedge, and O'Neill was wise enough to perceive 
that it was the beginning of the end, but he determined 
that while he lived Ulster should not be planted. He saw, 
too, that the weakness of the Irish was chiefly owing to 
their divisions, and he resolved to subdue all the Ulster 
chiefs to his power and reduce them to their former tribu- 
tary condition. His correspondence with them on this 
subject was short and to the point. "Send me the tribute 

you owe me, or else " he wrote to The O'Donnell, who, 

nothing daunted, replied in the same style, "I owe you no 

tribute, and if I did " The chiefs carried out their 

unspoken threat, and after much bloodshed Shane was the 
victor. But O'Neill was not the only person who knew 
that in their divisions lay the weakness of the Irish. The 
English of the Pale knew it too, and efforts were made to 
disunite the northern chiefs and make them rivals of 
proud John. For this purpose O'Reilly was made earl of 
Breffny and "baron of Oavan; and Oalvagh O'Donnell was 
offered the earldom of Tyrconnel, and letters sent by Sus- 
sex telling the countess that Elizabeth was about to send 
her costly presents. O'Neill saw the turn affairs were 
taking, and cut the rivalry short by first invading Breffny 
and then taking the earl and countess of Tyrconnel prison- 
ers. This affair is the darkest stain on O'Neill's by 
no means spotless character. His wife was Oalvagh 
O'Donnell's daughter by a former marriage. Her mother 
being dead, O'Donnell had married the countess of Argyll, 
who probably betrayed her husband to O'Neill, for she 
Immediately became his mistress. O'Neill's wife died of 
shame and grief at the treatment of herself and her 
imprisoned father. 

The other Ulster chiefs were now terrified into submis- 
sion, and O'Neill fancied that, with a little help, he could 
free all Ireland from the English yoke. Accordingly, he 
sent word to the king of France that with five or six 
thousand men he could free the country from the English. 
The French made no response; but, on the other hand, 
Sussex returned from England with the intention of 
wasting and plundering Tyrone. His troops, however, 



HOW SHANE N T EILL HELD ULSTER. 60 

were defeated by O'Neill, and fresh supplies of men had 
to be sent from England; but meanwhile, to maintain the 
war, the Anglo-Norman earls of Kildare, Desmond, 
Ormonde, Thomond, and Clanrickarde enlisted in the 
English service. Even against this force O'Neill was a 
powerful adversary; he could muster 7,000 men in the 
field, and Elizabeth began to fear that she would lose 
Ireland as her sister ln\d lust Calais, for Sussex was no 
match for his adversary in military tactics. He had, how- 
ever, the advantage in treachery, and when he found that 
his arms made no impression on the Ulster troops, he wrote 
to inform Elizabeth that he had arranged with one Neil Gray 
to assassinate O'Neill. Elizabeth made no remonstrance, 
neither did she recall the deputy, but at the last moment 
Gray drew back; thus the plot failed. Still treachery was 
the cheapest and easiest way of getting rid of the obnoxious 
Ulsterman, and Sussex was unwilling to abandon so 
brilliant a scheme. His next effort took the form of a 
present. Through the agency of one John Smith, he sent 
O'Neill a present of poisoned wine, but either the drug- 
was less potent or the O'Neill household less heavy drinkers 
than Sussex fancied, for though every one was made ill by 
the harmful stuff, not one person died. But John Smith 
was never discovered or brought to justcie, O'Neill being 
easily persuaded to "forget the matter." Still peace was 
not made between Elizabeth and O'Neill till the earl of 
Kildare, who, through family connections, had great 
influence with his kinsman, persuaded him to make his 
submission; and Elizabeth, acting on her own discretion, 
invited him to visit her at the English Court. Sussex 
raised all sorts of obstacles to the visit, but the chief had 
set his heart on the plan, and was not to be balked. He 
had resolved to go in regal state, and show the English 
what an Irish king was like; he knew very well how an 
English deputy looked, and felt much contempt for the 
court costume of the period. His suite of forty gallow- 
glasses were dressed in no provincial imitation of the 
London mode, but wore their native saffron shirts, made 
of many yards of yellow linen, furry short coats, and 
sandalled shoes or brogues. Their hair they wore long 



36 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

behind and curled on to the shoulders, and cut in front to 
cover the forehead with a fringe or "glib." None of 
them — not even Shane himself — spoke English, so all 
negotiations had to be carried on through an interpreter. 
But the natural grace of the chief's manner and his shrewd- 
ness gained him the queen's good graces; so that, though 
she kept him in London longer than he wished, when at 
length, in May, 1562, he was allowed to return to Dublin, 
he expressed himself well pleased with the visit. Ulster 
was still in an unsettled state; the chiefs were jealous of 
O'Neill's influence, and the English of the Pale did their 
utmost to foster the feeling; Shane punished all insubor- 
dination by laying waste the land of the offenders, and the 
English government having broken their pledges to him, 
he considered himself freed from his share in the bargain, 
so Ulster drifted once more into a state of war. Elizabeth 
again invited the "rebel" to London, but he, remembering 
the difficulty he had had in persuading her to let him leave, 
courteously but firmly declined, saving that the state of 
his country was such that he could not leave it, but that 
he would be pleased to receive the English ambassador at 
his house at Benburb. Here the English were hospitably 
received, and O'Neill signed articles of peace. 

He was now the unrivalled in Tyrone, and governed the 
country with justice and vigor; he encouraged all kinds of 
husbandry and wheat growing; and if a robbery were com- 
mitted he forced restitution, or if this were impossible, 
reimbursed the loser from his own resources. But at last, 
by an act of treachery, he brought about his own ruin. 
The Scottish settlers had always been his firm adherents 
and the enemies of the English, but now to please his new 
friends he turned against his old allies, made war on them 
and defeated them with great slaughter. Thus he al ienated 
his truest friends, and his interests and those of England 
were too opposite for there to be any lasting peace between 
them, for both Elizabeth and O'Neill wanted Ireland. In 
1564, Sussex was recalled and when shortly afterward Sir 
Henry Sidney was sent in his place he found the Pale 
invaded and Ulster at war with the English settlers. Sid- 
ney played upon O'Neill's unpopularity, and induced the 



HOW SHAXE O'NEILL HELD ULSTER. 37 

Ulster chiefs to join his army. Even Shane's old friend, 
Hugh O'Donnell, who by the death of Calvagh, had 
become earl of Tyrconnel, turned against him, and the 
united army marched through and wasted Tyrone. Shane 
in extremity, with the English on one side and the injured 
Scotch on the other, knew not which way to turn. He 
thought of throwing himself on the mercy of the English, 
but his retainers, mindful of the repeated attempts to 
assassinate him, and remembering the fate of the Fitzger- 
ald s, advised him rather to trust the Scottish settlers. 
They willingly consented to receive him and his retainers, 
and taking this opportunity to revenge O'Neill's treachery, 
prepared a great banquet for the fugitives, and then barring 
the doors of the dining hall they fell upon the Ulstermen 
and slew them to a man. 

Such was the end of Shane O'Neill. He had connived 
at the murder of his half-brother, and stolen the wife of the 
man who was at once his father-in-law and his friend, and 
he turned against his truest allies when he believed it would 
serve his purpose. But in judging him we must compare 
him with others of his time, with Henry VIII., with Mary, 
with Elizabeth, and we shall see he was no worse, if no bet- 
ter than his age. On the other hand, poor, ignorant, and 
badly armed, he kept his country for his own people against 
the forces of a great power, and his sword held the roof- 
tree over many families in defiance of the fire-arms of 
England. At his death, Elizabeth thought the time had 
come for the colonization or plantation of Ulster. 

Sidney had been recalled, but he now returned to Ireland 
and called a parliament in Dublin. To this assembly 
Englishmen who had never seen their counties and bor- 
oughs were "returned" without election, and mayors and 
sheriffs elected themselves. This was one of the first acts 
of the Protestant ascendancy, for until this time the Re- 
formation had been little more than a name in Ireland, 
for though during the reign of Mary English Protestants 
had fled in great numbers to Papist Ireland, where religious 
persecution was unknown, these refugees had had no in- 
fluence on the natives. Protestant services had to be per- 
formed in Latin, as the ministers spoke no Irish and the 



38 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

people understood no English. Protestantism and reform- 
ation meant to the Irish England and oppression, and the 
new creed had for them but few attractions. But now 
new means of enlightening the idolatrous Papists were to 
be tried — life, temporal and eternal, were to be offered to 
the convert, and a violent and eternal death dealt out to 
the unregenerate. Seldom, indeed, has religion held out 
such double advantages; henceforth, in Ireland, straight 
was the gate and narrow the way that led to eternal damna- 
tion, yet many there were who entered in thereat; indeed, 
up to the time of James I., not sixty Irish accepted the 
Protestant salvation offered on such advantageous terms. 
Sidney's scandalous parliament had been got together for 
the special purpose of confiscating Tyrone, and only such 
men were sent to it as were supposed to favor the project. 
An act was accordingly passed attainting of high treason 
the late Shane O'Neill, suppressing the name 0' Neill, 
and annexing the territory of Tyrone to the royal pos- 
sessions. Protestant settlers were to be imported and 
Protestant schools established by law, and an old and 
feeble member of the O'Neill family, named Tirlough 
Lynnogh, was appointed to the earldom of Tyrone. By 
this same parliament Sidney now carried measures for his 
favorite scheme of local government. Sir Edward Fit- 
ton was created president of (Jonnaught, and to Sir John 
Perrot was entrusted the government of Minister. 

Elizabeth felt it would be useless to attempt to plant the 
whole island at once, but she hoped little by little to com- 
pass its colonization, and a scheme was proposed for send- 
ing over one able-bodied emigrant from every two English 
villages. But at first the queen began in a small way by 
giving Ards and Down in the territory of Tyrone to the 
natural son of her secretary, Sir Thomas Smith. At this 
news the whole country was in an uproar. Young Smith 
began in a high-handed manner, turning out the clansmen, 
who made desperate resistance, and the young man was 
killed in an eviction fray. Elizabeth now thought that 
plantation would answer better if carried out on a larger 
scale, and the earl of Essex had Olannaboy and Ferney 
presented to him if he could clear them of the rebels. 



HOW SHAK"E XE1LL HELD ULSTEE. 39 

Brian, Hugh, and old Tirlough O'Neill all rose against 
him, and Essex sought the help of Con O'Donnell, whom 
he afterward betrayed. At last Brian O'Neill made peace 
with Essex, who treacherously murdered him, his wife, 
and his two hundred retainers at a banquet. Frightened 
by this treachery the other chieftains could not for some 
time be induced to make their submission, and their resist- 
ance had been so desperate, and the English losses so great, 
that for that time the plantation of Ulster was abandoned. 
In the meantime Fitton was committing all kinds of atroc- 
ities in Connaught. Men were hanged and beheaded, 
stripped naked and buried alive in the bogs for no other 
crime than that they were Papists. The practice of coign 
and livery, so rightly condemned by the English when re- 
sorted to by the natives, was revived, but it had the im- 
mediate effect of producing rebellion, and the government 
were obliged to recall Fitton. 

In Minister, things were better under Sir John Perrot, 
who, though cruelly severe, was perfectly impartial, and 
governed English and Irish with the same degree of rigor, 
and gained thereby the lasting gratitude of the subject race. 

While he was governor of Minister, Elizabeth made her 
most serious attempt to plant. A company of English 
gentlemen was formed to colonize the counties of Cork, 
Limerick, and Kerry. They tried to turn out the owners, 
and a desperate and bloody war ensued. Of these plant- 
ers, Sir Peter Oarew has immortalized his name by his 
fiendish cruelty; among other barbarities, he slew the 
whole family of the Butlers, not even sparing the child of 
three years old. The Geraldiues, the M'Carthys, and Or- 
monde's brothers now united for self -;h 'fence. The stand- 
ard of revolt was raised by Sir James Fitzmaurice Fitzger- 
ald, cousin to the earl of Desmond, who, with his brother 
John, was at that time a prisoner in the Tower of London. 

Sidney marched his forces through Tipperary, Water- 
ford, and Limerick, burning villages, blowing up castles, 
and hanging garrisons. The Irish, on their side, fought 
with such savage fierceness that government, exhausted by 
the struggle, disavowed any intention of planting, and 
once more the confiscation scheme was abandoned. 



40 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE DESMOND REBELLION. 

When, after two years of hiding in the Kerry hills, 
James Fitzmanrice Fitzgerald was pardoned, he prudently 
retired to the Continent, and the rebellion being quelled, 
the earl of Desmond and his brother Sir John Ceraldine 
were released from the Tower, wherein they had been im- 
prisoned six years. But even now Elizabeth did not intend 
the earl to escape; she could not prove any acts of disloy- 
alty against him, but she distrusted him, and this feeling 
was no doubt fostered by his hereditary rival the earl of 
Ormonde, head of the Butler family, who lived in London, 
and was a favorite of the queen. Elizabeth therefore or- 
dered that when the earl disembarked in Dublin he should 
be seized and imprisoned in the Castle. But somehow 
Desmond got wind of this plot, and fled from Dublin on a 
swift horse, and after five days and nights of peril he 
arrived at his castle in Munster a less loyal man than he 
set out from London. By nature Desmond was frank, 
courageous, and honorable — and had he been well treated, 
would probably have proved a loyal subject. Six years 
before this time he and Ormonde had had a disjDute about 
some property, and the queen had graciously granted him 
permission to explain his case in London. On his arrival 
both he and his brother John, who accompanied him, had 
been imprisoned in the Tower, where they were kept for 
six years, and it was during this time that the unsuccessful 
attempt to plant Munster had been made, and that James 
Fitzmaurice had rebelled. It is strange that the earl 
made no rebellious effort on his return to Munster, but he 
was of a vacillating nature, and could not determine to 
ally himself with either party; moreover, the Fitzgerald 
exchequer was nearly exhausted by the late war, so Mun- 
ster and the west were quiet. Not so the east. The plan- 



THE DESMOND REBELLION. 41 

tation of King's County and Queen's County had not suc- 
ceeded. Some of the O'Connors and O'Mores had escaped 
extermination, and their decendants, led by the famous 
outlaw, Rory Oge O'More, perpetually harassed the new 
settlers till, after eighteen years of petty warfare, he was 
slain in 1577. O'More being dead, a convention of the 
heads of the neighboring Irish families was called together 
in the queen's name. Four hundred obeyed, the summons, 
and assembled on the hill of Mullaghmast. As soon as 
they were gathered together they were surrounded by a 
triple line of English soldiers and butchered in cold blood. 
A baser, more cruel, or more treacherous deed it is impos- 
sible to conceive. The lowest savage might well be 
ashamed of such a transaction . and it now seemed clear that 
no reliance could be placed on English promises, and that 
the queen's name was no protection to her Irish subjects. 
The island was filled with horror at the hateful deed, and 
with disgust when it was known that Sir Henry Sidney, 
who organized it, was to keep the office of lord-deputy, 
and Crosbie, who had commanded the butchery, to retain 
his position in the army. 

In the meantime James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald was 
trying to raise forces on the Continent, and to help him 
in this he tried to give to his rebellion the color of relig- 
ious warfare. In vain he applied for help to the kings of 
France and Spain, but he persuaded Pope Gregory XIII. 
to issue a bull encouraging the Irish to fight for their re- 
ligion, and also to fit out a small expedition, which was 
placed under command of an English adventurer named 
Stukely. But on his way to Ireland Stukely encountered 
the Portuguese fleet bound for Morocco, and this affair 
being more to his mind he joined it, carried off the whole 
expedition, and was never heard of more. 

Fitzmaurice knew nothing of Stukely's desertion till, 
with about fourscore Spaniards, he landed at Dingle, in 
July, 1579, when he found that nothing had been heard 
of the expedition. He now found himself in the unenvi- 
able position of a man who commands a foreign invasion 
of eighty men, but on hearing of his arrival John and 
James of Desmond, with 3,000 tenants of the Geraldines, 



42 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

joined the rebellion at once, bnt the earl still wavered; he 
feared to ally himself with this forlorn hope, while his 
sympathy with the insurgents was evident enough to make 
him distrusted by the English. He probably hoped to 
keep friends with both parties till he could make sure 
whether or no the expected Spsnish force would arrive. 
But before the little band of invaders had been a month 
in the island Fitzmaurice was killed by his kinsmen, Ulick 
and William Bourke. John of Desmond was now the 
leader of the rebels, and for some time he held the field 
successfully against Sir William Drury, but Elizabeth was 
raising sufficient force to crush a much greater rising, and 
a proclamation was also issued declaring Desmond a traitor 
unless he came into the English camp within twenty days. 
Forced to make up his mind, Desmond remembered his 
own imprisonment, the fate of the Kildare branch of his 
family, of Brian O'Neill's six hundred men, and of the 
O'Mores and O'Connors at Mullaghmast, and so unwilling 
to draw the sword against his own brothers, he openly de- 
clared for the rebels. Ma] by and the infamous Crosbie 
were committing atrocities that surpass description; still 
the advantage was with the rebels, and Elizabeth now sent 
over the earl of Ormonde, whose lo} r al zeal was strength- 
ened by private enmity to the Geraldines. He and the 
new deputy, Sir William Pelham, marched across the island 
in two columns, wasting the country, destroying the houses, 
and murdering every living creature, man, woman, and 
child, that they encountered. To resist such an army was 
impossible to the half-naked rebels, who were armed only 
with knives and swords. Wherever the army passed, it 
left behind it ruin and desolation. Desmond and his fol- 
lowers were soon reduced to the condition of hunted fugi- 
tives, nor were the men at arms the only sufferers in those 
days of savage warfare. Sir Nicholas Malby, the com- 
mander of the English army, has left us a graphic account 
of his proceedings in Connaught during the winter of 
1576. "At Christmas," he writes, "I entered their terri- 
tory, and finding that courteous dealing with them had 
like to have cut my throat, I thought good to take another 
course, and so with determination to consume them with 



THE DESMOND REBELLION. 43 

fire and sword, sparing neither old nor young, I entered 
their mountains. I burnt all their corn and houses, and 
committed to the sword all that could be found. . . . 
This was Shane Burke's country; then I burnt Ullick 
Burke's in like manner. I assaulted a castle, where the 
garrison surrendered. I put them to the misericordia of 
my soldiers. They were all slain. Then I went on, spar 
ing none that came in my way, which cruelty did so amaze 
their followers that thev could not tell where to bestow 
themselves. Shane Burke made means to me to pardon 
him and forbear killing of his people. I would not heark- 
en, but went on my way. The gentlemen of Olanrickarcle 
came to me. I found it was but dallying to win time, so 
I left Ullick as little corn as I had left his brother, and 
what people was found had as little favor as the other had. 
It was all done in rain and frost and storm, journeys in 
such weather bringing them sooner to submission. They 
are humble enough now, and will yield to any terms we 
like to offer them." Ormonde, counting up his services, 
boasts that he has slain "88 captains, 2 leaders, with 1,5-17 
notorious traitors and malefactors, and above 4,000 others." 
That many of these others ivere old men, women, and chil- 
dren does not seem to have detracted from the honor of 
having been the slayer of nearly six thousand persons. Pel- 
ham. with fiendish cruelty, refused pardon to any rebels 
who did not bring with them the heads of some of their 
comrades, "for this," he said, "sows dissension among 
them, as they will not forgive blood." 

At last, too late to help the rebels, the Spaniards, com- 
manded by Sebastian San Jose, arrived, and occupied the 
Fort del Ore. Lord Grey, who was now deputy, was march- 
ing southward, and at the same time Winter and Bingham 
prepared to attack the place by sea. The garrison were 
in a desperate case, and San Jose determined to make his 
submission. Such of the Irish who were there entreated 
him to hold the town to the end, but in vain: without 
striking a single blow, the cowardly Spaniard threw himself 
on the mercy of Grey. He trusted in what had no exist- 
ence; and by order of Grey, and under command of Si! 1 
Walter Raleigh, the whole garrison was either shot or 



44 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

hanged. The victory of the English being now assured. 
Grey organized small bands of soldiers to hunt down the 
rebels in the mountains. So insatiable was this man's thirst 
for blood that it was said of him that he left Elizabeth 
nothing but ashes and corpses to rule over in Ireland; and 
the officers who served under him seem to have been equal- 
ly devoid from human feeling. Achin, when he seized the 
castle of Kildimo, slew 150 women and children. Ormonde 
caught and hanged Lady Fitzgerald, of Imokeily, and ex- 
ecuted 134 other persons; Morris massacred 600 women, 
children, and sick persons at Bathlin; and in Dublin the 
less important men were hanged in batches, the blue blood 
being reserved for the more distinguished adjuncts of 
drawing and quartering. The history at this time has a 
sickening smell of blood. At length the news came that 
John of Desmond had been caught and mortally wounded; 
lie died at once, and his body, thrown across his horse, was 
taken to Cork. His head was sent to Dublin to be spiked 
in front of the castle, and his body was hanged by the legs 
in chains on the gates of Cork. Here it remained a loath- 
some sight for three years, till one stormy night the wind 
took pity on the ghastly frame that had held so brave a 
soul and blew it into the sea, The earl, surrounded by 
a few tried friends, was chased from mountain to mountain , 
watching by night and hardly venturing to sleep by day. 
At last, in 1583, he was caught and killed, and his head 
sent to Elizabeth, to be impaled on London Bridge. 

All authorities are agreed that the state of Minister was 
now truly horrible. The fertile province had become an 
arid waste; year after year the harvest had been burned, so 
that plague and famine had completed the destruction be- 
gan by the sword. Such poor wretches as survived looked, 
says Spencer, "more like anatomies than human beings. 
They did eat dead carcasses, yea, one another, soon after, 
in as much as the very carcasses they spared not to scrape 
out of the graves." Sir William Pelham, too, says that the 
people "otter themselves with their wives and children, 
rather to be slain by the army than to suffer the famine that 
now beginneth to pinch them." 

The province being ripe for plantation, Elizabeth resolved 



THE DESMOND REBELLION. 45 

to re-people this desert with English subjects, so a parlia- 
ment was called, and the Desmond estates, amounting to 
more than 574,028 acres of profitable land, were confiscated 
and offered to English undertakers on the easiest possible 
terms. 

The land was divided into tracts varying from 4,000 to 
12,000 acres. No rent was to be paid for the first three 
years, and after that only half rent for three years. The 
full rent, therefore, would not be paid for six years after oc- 
cupation, and this rent itself was so low as to be almost 
nominal; two-pence per acre in Limerick and Kerry coun- 
ties and three-pence in Waterford and Cork. For ten years 
the undertakers were to transport their produce free of duty 
— no slight advantage in those days. Large tracts were 
granted to soldiers who had been engaged in the war, and 
younger sons and brothers were invited to plant. There 
was, however, a dark side to this dazzling prospect. Eliz- 
abeth's object was not merely to enrich her soldiers and 
adventurers, but also to get rid of the native Irish. None 
of these were to be taken as tenants, nor were they to be 
employed as carpenters, builders, wheelwrights, black- 
smiths, or indeed in any skilled trade. 

Everything except "hewing of wood and drawing of wa- 
ter" was to be done by English colonists. But here arose 
a difficulty; the English farmers and artisans could hardly 
be persuaded to go to so barbarous a country, and when 
they got there the natives made things so unpleasant for 
them that many returned at once. The hungry, starving 
Irish desperately resisted this attempt to root them from 
their soil; they formed secret societies to destroy the settlers, 
and were known by the name of "Kobin Hoods. " What the 
English would not concede them because it was just thcv 
gave in to for fear of violence, and gradually the Irish were 
taken as tenants, and some of the undertakers, sick of the 
job, gave the land back to its old owners. Thus the scheme 
failed; the natives were not exterminated, but exasperated 
by so much cruelty looked out for a chance of revenge. 



40 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ELIZABETH'S WAR WITH HUGH O'NEILL. 

One of the officers who had led the English cavalry dur- 
ing the Minister rebellion was Aodh or Hugh O'Neill the 
son of Matthew, baron of Dungannon, who had been killed 
to make way for his brother kShane. Matthew had left a 
little son Hugh, who had been brought up partly in Ireland 
and partly in London at the court of Elizabeth. There 
was, in appearance and manner, nothing of the wild Ulster 
chieftain about young Hugh. He was a courtly and well 
educated personage, wearing English dress, capable of 
speaking English, and quite willing to bear the title of earl 
of Tyrone. The attainted and forbidden name of O'Neill 
he kept in the background as long as he was on English 
soil. 

In Ulster, however, he was the Irish chieftain, and was 
worshipped by the clansmen, who elected him The O'Neill, 
and refused to acknowledge the authority of old Tirlough. 

The blood-thirsty lord Grey had been recalled, and Sir 
John Perrot appointed deputy, to the immense pacification 
of Ireland, for the severity of Perrot fell equally on Saxon 
and Celt, and despite his hasty temper he gained the respect 
of the natives. In one instance only did he try to enforce 
order by gross injustice. He suspected The O'Donnell of 
treasonable designs, and seeing no fair means of getting 
hostages for good behavior, he had recourse to treachery, 
and sent a supposititious Spanish trading vessel, laden with 
real Spanish wine, round to the coasts of Donegal, bidding 
the captain invite young Ulster chiefs on board to taste the 
wines. 

O'Donnell's son, Red Hugh, a boy only fifteen years, of 
age, two sons of Shane O'Neill, and some others, accepted 
the offer; they went on board and drank deeply of the Span- 
ish wine. When they were half tipsy they were disarmed 



Elizabeth's wai: wttb eugh o'neill. 47 

unci fastened under the hatches; the anchor was weighed, 

and the ship set sail for Dublin Bay, and for four years and 
a half the unhappy boys were kept prisoners in Dublin Cas- 
tle. This outrage, however, called forth no rebuke from 
the government of the Pale, or from the queen, and it does 
not seem to have made Perrot really unpopular with the 
Irish. Under his rule the country was quieter than it had 
been for years, but at length Elizabeth heard that the dep- 
uty had refused to punish O'Kourke for making an effigy 
of herself, and dragging it at the cart's tail. For this of- 
fence Perrot was recalled and beheaded, and to the misfor- 
tune of Ireland Sir William Fitz William was appointed to 
succeed him. In the meantime, Hugh O'Neill had set- 
tled in Ulster and had married a daughter of The O'Don- 
nell. He had sent his son to be fostered by his former 
enemy, O'Cahen, and at the death of old Tirlough, openly 
assumed the forbidden title of "The O'Neill." 

Elizabeth was uneasy at Hugh's "degeneration. " As yet, 
nothing was known to his discredit, but rumors and vague 
whispers filled the air. It was reported that he constantly 
changed the men in his army, so that all the men in 
Tyrone should by turns get a military education. It was 
darkly hinted, too, that the lead ostensibly imported for 
the roof of his house at Dungannon was really intended to 
take the form of bullets. Probably neither rumor was 
true; or, if O'Neill did train the clansmen of Tyrone, he 
had at first no rebellious intention. His Minister experi- 
ences had made him too well aware of the power of Eng- 
land for him to wish to plunge Ulster into what must be a 
state of misery. But he was half unconsciously drifting 
into rebellion. Under the rule of Sir William Fitz Will- 
iam the Irish saw they need look neither for justice or 
mercy. The first act of the new deputy was to imprison, 
on false charges, Sir Owen 0' Toole and Sir John Dogherty, 
both loyal gentlemen. His next, to affirm that Mac- 
Mahon had, some years ago, levied rents with military 
force, and for this imaginary offence MacMahon was 
hanged, and his lands, being forfeited to the crown, were 
graciously bestowed upon the deputy, Sir Henry Bagnal, 
and other accomplices in the murder. Bagnal was now 



48 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

created marshal of the British army in Ireland. He be- 
came O'Neill's personal and implacable enemy, for, 
O'Neill's first wife being dead — or, as some say, divorced 
from him — O'Neill and Miss Bagnal met, and notwith- 
standing differences of race and religion, they resolved to 
marry. Bagnal got wind of the affair and sent his sister 
to Dublin, under the care of friends, with strict injunc- 
tions that she was not to see her lover. So when O'Neill 
called at the house, the lady was not admitted to the room 
where he was received. Hugh made himself most fascina- 
ting to the rest of the family, and quite won their good 
graces. The poor, solitary woman was for the time for- 
gotten, but at length Tyrone took his leave, and Miss 
BagnaFs friends rushed to her room to tell her how charm- 
ing they thought her rebel — but the bird was flown ! While 
O'Neill had engrossed the household, she had, by a previous 
arrangement, ran off with a confidential friend of her lover, 
who took her to an appointed place of meeting. 

The poor woman must have had many a heartache, for 
there was no meanness Bagnal would not stoop to, to injure 
his brother-in-law. He trumped up all manner of false 
charges against him, and care was taken that O'Neill's 
letters disproving these calumnies should not reach their 
destination. O'Neill's continued friendship with the fami- 
ly of his first wife is the best proof of the falseness of some 
of these slanders. 

Tyrone now found himself driven into precisely that 
course of action he most wished to avoid. The continued 
barbarity of Fitz William maddened the people of Ulster, 
and they turned to O'Neill as their leader, urging him to 
take up arms. Bagnal 's enmity goaded him to the same 
course, for any letters or explanations he wrote to the queen 
were stopped, and he found himself entrapped in a network 
of misrepresentations. At this time Hugh of the Fetters 
— an illegitimate son of Shane — gave information against 
O'Neill to the government, and for this offence Hugh in a 
high-handed manner strangled the rebel. This act made 
no small sensation, and the earl found it necessary to go to 
London to make his peace with the queen. Free from 
false dealing and treachery, he had no difficulty in con- 



ELIZABETHS WAR WITH HFGH XEILL, 4!) 

vincing Elizabeth of his loyalty, and entered willingly into 
articles with her, the more so as he had not the slightest 
intention of keeping them longer than suited his conven- 
ience. About this time Red Hugh O'Donnell and the sons 
of Shane O'Neill succeeded in escaping from their prison 
in Dublin. Their flight was in winter time, and so intense 
was the cold, that Art O'Neill was frozen to death, and 
Red Hugh's feet were so frostbitten that his toes had to 
be amputated, and it was many months before he recovered 
the use of his legs, but at length, after much suffering, lie 
reached his home in Tyreonnel. He was still only nine- 
teen years of age, and his four years of captivity coming at 
a time when he was young and impressionable had embit- 
tered his mind toward the English. He never forgot or 
forgave the injury he had received, and his life was spent 
in attempts at vengeance. His youth, his sorrows, his 
perils, and his sufferings all endeared him to the clansmen. 
and at his return his father resigned the title in his favor. 
Reports of Fitz William's cruelty were now becoming too 
frequent to be disregarded, and Elizabeth recalled him and 
sent out Sir William Russell, son of the earl of Bedford. 
Young Tyreonnel had now risen in arms against the Eng- 
lish, and O'Neill, sick of the treachery, crooked ways, 
and barbarity of the administration, threw in his lot with 
the rebels. O'Donnell was not restrained by any sentimen- 
tal gentleness toward his late gaolers, and began the war 
with vigor, defeating the English at Enniskillen with great 
slaughter, and at Blackwater they received a yet more 
terrible blow. Half the British army was destroyed, Sir 
Henry Bagnal being among the slain. All Ireland was 
now in arms — Ulster, Connaught, and Minister, under 
O'Neill's earl of Desmond, "the Sugane earl" or earl of 
Straw, as the new earl was called, he being an earl of 
Hugh's making, for the true Desmond was a prisoner in 
London. Even loyal Leinster turned against the English, 
and for the time it seemed as though Ireland was to regain 
her independence. 

Elizabeth was sick of the Irish difficulty, so she sent over 
an overwhelming force to stamp out the rebellion, and as far 
as possible exterminate the rebels. 20,000 foot soldiers and 

4 



50 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

2,000 horse were landed under the command of the earl of 
Essex. The Irish harassed this army in skirmishing match- 
es, and greatly reduced them, but were too wily to en- 
counter such a superior force in the open field, and Essex 
marched his troops through Leinster and back to Dublin 
without producing any effect. At length, on the banks 
of the Blackwater, he and O'Neill met; they held a deep 
and earnest conversation, at which no third person was 
present. What passed can never be known, but O'Neill 
stated his grievances to Essex, and having proposed terms, 
an amnesty for six weeks was agreed to. Essex was after- 
ward accused of a traitorous understanding with Tyrone, 
and it was rumored that he had agreed to leave O'Neill 
unmolested on a promise of his assisting Essex to the 
English crown. The clamor was so great that Essex 
thought it necessary to return to England, where the fickle 
queen caused her whilom favorite to be beheaded. . Blunt, 
lord Mount joy, was now sent to Ireland, and in him 
O'Neill found a very different sort of adversary — Mount- 
joy was too wise to allow himself to be entrapped into woods 
and morasses where he knew the Irish would have the ad- 
vantage. The terrible weapon he wielded against his 
enemies was devastation, burning the corn and destroying 
the dwellings. Thus the Minister and Connaught Irish 
were reduced and many of the chiefs taken prisoners. All 
this while Spanish succor was expected, but some of the 
chiefs, unable to make longer resistance, came in. "But 
what if the Spaniards should arrive?" inquired the presi- 
dent of one of these. "In that case," answered the Irish- 
man, "let not your lordship rely upon me, nor on any 
of those lords who seem most attached to your service." 

At length a very battered and dilapidated Spanish fleet 
arrived at Kinsale, under command of Don Juan d'Aquila. 
Why in Kinsale no one knew. Don Juan had been sent 
to help the rebels of Ulster, and lie seemed to have pitched 
on the fort furthest from his allies. Most of O'Neill's men 
were militia, and would not bear arms out of Ulster; but, 
in spite of difficulties, he collected 5,000 men and marched 
the length of the island. A second Spanish contingent now 
arrived, and the O'Sullivans and O'Driscols, who had 



Elizabeth's war with huge o'xeill. 51 

hitherto remained passive, threw in their lot with the 
rebels. The besieging army was now besieged — on one 
hand were the Spaniards in Kinsale, on the other the Irish 
marching from the north, and the advanced season 
afflicted the English, who were willing to raise the siege 
when Don Juan pressed O'Neill to attack them. Tyrone 
resisted this persuasion. He knew by experience of what 
stuff an English army is made, and could not believe the 
Spaniard's account of the distress and demoralization of 
the British force, but at length he let himself be overruled 
and the attack was made by night; but Don Juan had 
revealed the plan of action to the English, and the Irish 
were completely defeated. 

The war was now practically over. . O'Donnell went to 
Spain, where he died of a broken heart. The Sngane earl 
was betrayed and killed, and O'Xeill made his submission 
to Mount joy just at the time when Elizabeth was breathing 
her last. 

When Tyrone heard that the queen was dead he bitterly 
lamented his submission — a few hours more resistance 
would have enabled him to make peace with the new king- 
on a very different footing, but the die was cast, and Hugh 
had resigned forever the name of The O'Neill before he 
knew that his enemy was dead. Elizabeth's death was the 
cause of much rejoicing in Ireland, for James Stuart was 
supposed to be sympathetic to the Catholics, and was de- 
scended from the Scoto-Milesian kings. His Celtic blood 
brought little advantage to his Irish subjects, nor did they 
derive much benefit from his leanings towards Catholicism. 
He enforced the penal code which under Elizabeth had 
remained more or less a dead letter, and he assured his 
Romish subjects they need look for no toleration. To 
break the power of the O'Neill's the lands were subdivided 
among the smaller chieftains of the clan, and the ordinary 
clansmen reduced to the condition of tenants. But it was 
soon found that though nominally crushed Hugh of 
Tyrone, backed by Rory O'Donnell, earl of Tyrconnel, was 
a very powerful adversary, and also there was grave dis- 
content in England that a war which had cost so much 
blood and such unheard of sums of money should bring no 



52 IRISH HISTOEY FOR ENGLISH READER". 

advantage at all to the conquerors. It was, therefore, 
decided that O'Neill must be got rid of, and his estates 
which had already been bestowed among his clansmen be 
made to revert to the English crown, and for this purpose 
a sham plot was had recourse to. An anonymous letter 
was dropped in the council chamber of Dublin mentioning 
a design to murder the lord deputy. This paper named 
no names in connection with the supposed plot, but the 
government stated that they had evidence proving Tyrone 
and Tyrconnel to be implicated and called upon them to 
appear. They, seeing the impossibility of disproving such 
charges, fled with their families to Europe, and ultimately 
died in Rome. 

At the time, their flight was held conclusive proof of 
guilt, they were declared traitors and their estates forfeited. 
In 1604, when it had so suited James, he had pronounced 
that Tyrone and Tyrconnel had no right over the lands of 
petty chieftains, but now, six years later, the law was found 
to have another meaning; not only the estates' which had 
been left to O'Neill and O'Donnell were confiscated, but 
also those which had been declared the property of the 
lesser lords. The counties of Tyrone, Deny, Donegal, 
Armagh, Fermanagh, and Cavan, in all 2,830,873 Irish 
acres thus came to the crown, and were parcelled out to 
undertakers as Minister had been in the time of Elizabeth. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER. 

James profited by Elizabeth's Minister experience; he 
made smaller grants of land, and passed stringent laws 
against absenteeism, and he had the wit to perceive how fit 
were the industrious and thrifty Scots for the work of col- 
onization. Differences of religion, as well as of race, 
divided these new-comers from the natives, and there was 
in consequence less degeneration; indeed, to this day the 
descendants of these Scotch Presbyterian settlers differ in 
character from the Irish of the other provinces. Still, the 



THE PLANTATION OF CTL8TER. 53 

plantation system was never throughly carried out; the 
Scotch settlers, seduced by offers of exorbitant rent, admit- 
ted the Irish as tenants, and thus the natives retained a 
foothold on the soil they loved so well, After a time many 
of the Scotch and English planters, tiring of their exile, 
returned to their own country, first selling their interest 
in their holdings and the value of the improvements they 
had made. From this arose the practice of buying and sell • 
ing the tenant right, a custom still peculiar to Ulster, and 
familiar to us as the Ulster Tenant-Right. Compared with 
any of Elizabeth's efforts, the plantation of Ulster was a 
marked success. The people, starved, poor, plague-stricken, 
and broken-spirited, crept meekly into the bogs and mor- 
asses, and only in Cavan made any stand against the new- 
comers, or protest against the cruelties of Sir Arthur 
Chichester, the Ulster deputy. 

Perhaps a feeble rebellion would not have been wholly 
unwelcome to the rapacious Stuart, who could have used 
it as an excuse for confiscating Leinster and Connaught, 
but the Ulstermen at that moment were less vindictive 
than the worm. AVherefore James bethought himself of a 
new pretext for appropriating Leinster and Connaught. He 
first turned his attention to Leinster, and discovered that 
the titles by which the estates were held being many of 
them defective, a commission of inquiry must be held at 
once. Courts were assembled and juries empanelled, and 
as those jurors who did not find for the king were impris- 
oned, pilloried, and branded half-a-million of the Leinster 
acres were declared crown property. Connaught was now 
the only province free from confiscation. James had re- 
solved to turn that also to account, but he thought it well 
to pause for a season, for the Leinster men had not borne 
their wholesale eviction with the meekness of their Ulster 
compatriots. Too broken-spirited to rebel, they had 
sought to intimidate the planters by agrarian outrage, thus 
depreciating the value of land without entailing the penalty 
of treason. 

The king next turned his attention toward the construc- 
tion of the Irish House of Commons. The proportion of 
Roman Catholics to Anglicans in Ireland being then ;) 



54 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

hundred to one, there was naturally a large Catholic 
majority in the House of Commons. The Upper House 
being mainly filled with bishops of the Established Church 
and Elizabethan peers, had an Anglican majority, but in 
the Commons the Papists had it all their own way. The 
welfare of the native and Catholic Irish was, of course, the 
interest of this body, who were therefore opposed to the 
policy of James; and he, to obtain a Protestant majority, 
created seventeen new counties and forty boroughs, towns 
as yet unbuilt, but belonging to the new Protestant under- 
takers of Ulster. 

The first business of the reconstructed parliament was 
the election of a speaker. The Protestant candidate was 
Sir John Davis, and the recusant Sir John Everard. On 
a division being taken it was found that the Protestants 
had a majority of twenty votes, but in the meanwhile the 
recusants seated their candidate in the chair. The Protes- 
tants thrust Davis into his lap, and then dragged Everard 
from under his successful rival amid a disgraceful uproar, 
and after this undignified scene the Catholic party left the 
house in a body, thus giving the Protestants a clear field 
for making any laws they pleased against recusancy or 
non-attendance at an Anglican place of worship. Believed 
from all fear of opposition, the parliament now passed laws 
prohibiting Catholic worship, and imposing a fine of one 
shilling, payable each Sunday for recusance; ordering all 
Romish priests to quit the kingdom within forty days, and 
subjecting any priests found after that date to the penalties 
of treason, and making any person harboring a priest liable 
to a fine of forty pounds for the first offence, to imprison- 
ment for the second, and to death for the third. Many 
other restrictions were put upon Irish Catholics, who were 
now made subject to the laws which already oppressed their 
English brethren. But in England Papists were few and 
far between, whereas in Ireland ninety-nine out of every 
hundred persons were Catholic; this oppression of the 
many by the few was of course the greater persecution, but 
in reality their great number relieved the recusants from 
the penalties of the law, for it was found impossible to 
enforce them. From time to time priests and prelates 



THE PLANTATION OF ULSTER. 55 

were seized and killed, with every conceivable torture, and 
recusants were sometimes forced to pay the weekly fine: 
but the only result of this fitful and ineffectual persecution 
was to foster a spirit of religious intolerance, and awaken 
a desire for revenge. 

The Leinster titles had been defective through the care- 
lessness of the landowners who, having possessed their 
estates for centuries, had imagined themselves perfectly 
secure, but the Oonnaught titles were found to be equally 
defective, for though the landowners had Surrendered their 
estates to Elizabeth, and received them back with new 
titles, either through negligence or by design the patents 
for these had never been made out, and this omission made 
the titles invalid. James was, of course, in honor bound 
to make good the defect. The titles were paid for, and 
their defectiveness was the fault of the crown, not of the 
Connaught landowners; but honor was an obligation which 
never bound a Stuart, and the titles were declared defective. 
At this juncture the Oonnaught men, astutely perceiving 
the king's weak point, offered to buy new titles. The 
temptation made James swerve in his purpose of confisca- 
tion; he could not determine whether he preferred the 
greater or the more immediate gain. He never made up 
his mind, for while he still vacillated he died, and was 
succeeded by his son Charles. 

At the time of the accession of Charles, Falkland was 
deputy of Ireland, but being a man of inconveniently high 
principle he was recalled, and viscount Wentworth, better 
known by his later title of lord Strafford, was sent to replace 
him. Wentworth was sent to wring money out of the Irish 
nation, and this task he faithfully fulfilled. Under his 
rule the inspection of the Connaught titles proceeded brisk- 
ly, and the recusancy fines were strictly enforced. The 
Irish perceived that both this reforming zeal and the in- 
quiry into the titles sprang from the Stuart love of money, 
and accordingly offered to pay £120,000 in exchange for 5 1 
privileges or "graces," by which, in addition to the removal 
of many minor grievances, it was provided that the Con- 
naught landlords should be permitted to make a new en- 
rolment of their estates; that the undisputed possession of 



50 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

land for 60 years should constitute title; that recusants 
should be allowed to practice in the courts of law on taking 
an oath of civil allegiance to the king, and that a parlia- 
ment should be held to confirm these graces. The money 
was to be paid in three equal annual instalments. The 
conditions were agreed to, the first £-40,000 were cheerfully 
paid, and then parliament was called. The deputy, faith- 
ful to his master, now announced that two sessions would 
be held — the first for the king, the second for the people. 
The object of the king's session was, of course, money; and 
the Commons, elated at the prospect of the confirmation 
of the graces, readily voted the large sums asked for by the 
deputy. The people's session was next held, but, to the 
d ismay of the people, AVentworth announced that though 
some of the requests would be complied with, the king 
could not agree with others, and among those parts of his 
promise which Charles found himself unable to keep was 
that relat mj: to the confiscation of Connaught. This bus- 
iness was at once taken in hand. In Roscommon, Clare, 
Siigo. Mayo, and Limerick the juries were frightened in- 
to finding verdicts for the king, but in Galway they refused 
Id consider his claim legal, and for this offence they were 
each fined £4,000 and their possessions confiscated till the 
money was paid. Never had rapacious sovereign a truer 
servant than Charles found in Wentworth; never was de- 
voted service so ungratefully repaid; in all quarters the dep- 
uty was active in raising money for his worthless master. 
Among other sums he extorted £17,000 from the O'Byrnes 
of Wicklow, on pretence of a defect of title, and from the 
Corporation of the City of London, who were the great un- 
dertakers of Ulster, he wrung £70,000, but in this last step 
Wentworth had over-reached himself. The English un- 
dertakers would not submit to such oppression, and this 
act of tyranny contributed largely to his final overthrow. 

J lis cruelty and oppression in Ireland bore forth abun- 
dant fruit, but his administration though evil was intelli- 
gent. He founded and promoted the linen trade, which, 
though it never flourished in his day, became at a later 
period almost the only manufacture permitted to the Irish, 
bv.t on the other hand he did all in his power to crush the 



THE CIVIL WAK OF 1641. 57 

fast increasing wool trade, which he dreaded as a rival to 
that of England. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE CIVIL WAR OF 1041. 



Few events in modern history are enveloped in more mys- 
tery than are the rebellion and civil war of 1641. Much 
has been written on these subjects by Catholics and Pro- 
testants — English and Irish — but the writers who lived at 
or near the time of the rising Avere so swayed by party feel- 
ing, terror, and indignation that their evidence is most 
contradictory, and of little use in helping us to arrive at a 
just conclusion. 

That both parties were guilty of barbarous cruelty there 
is but little doubt; historians of every shade of opinion 
concede as much, only they have not agreed as to which 
side began the atrocities which make this episode so dark a 
blot on the history of England and Ireland. To which ever 
party commenced the indiscriminate murderings, drown- 
ings, hangings, strippings, and other horrors, belongs the 
greater guilt, but we can never know certainly whether the 
massacre of the Papists by the Scotch and English at Is- 
land Magee, or the atrocities of the Ulstermen under Sir 
Phelim O'Neill, were earlier in date; but indeed the mur- 
der of women and children with nameless cruelties, because 
other men have done the same by other innocent and de- 
fenceless creatures, is so barbarous a retaliation that it is sur- 
prising that two civilized peoples have been eager to claim 
this mean excuse. 

The causes of the rebellion were many and complicated: 
the murderings, torturings, burnings, and destroyings of 
the Elizabethan troops; the confiscation of large tracts of 
land under that queen and James I. ; the fitful and appar- 
ently meaningless persecution of the Catholics; the tyranny 
of Wentworth, and the weak despotism of Charles, all con- 
spired to make the Irish disaffected and disloyal. Within 
the last forty years Minister, part of Leinster, and Ulster 



58 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

had been planted, and the Connaught landlords were per- 
petually threatened with the same fate. These and many 
minor grievances had rendered the country as inflammable 
as a tar barrel, and all that was needed was the match to 
set the whole country in a flame. 

After the Elizabethan wars, great numbers of Irishmen 
had fled abroad and served in foreign armies. Thus an 
army of soldiers, hostile to the English rule, had been train- 
ed and these exiles resolved to free their country from the 
English yoke. Among the foremost of these were young 
Hugh O'Neill, son of the great earl of Tyrone, and Rory 
O'More, whom the English call "Roger Moore.'' 

Hugh and Rory served together in the Spanish army; a 
mutual sense of wrong, a mutual love of Ireland, and still 
more a mutual hatred of England, made them great friends. 
Between them they hatched a scheme for rebellion, and 
having obtained promises of help from their comrades they 
set off for Ireland to see what could be done with the old 
Irish families there. Rory went straight to Ireland, but 
Hugh travelled by way of Brussels, to recruit the Irish 
there. In Brussels he w T as assassinated, and his cousin 
Phelim stepped into his place. Meanwhile, Rory was or- 
ganizing rebellion in Dublin with quite unexpected suc- 
cess. All the old Irish were willing to rise, and Rory was 
just the man to make such an enterprise succeed. Hand- 
some, brave, honest, and of winning address, the Irish were 
all his devoted slaves, and trusted to him so implicitly that 
it became a saying that the Irish put their faith in "God, 
the Virgin Mary, and in Roger Moore." O'More under- 
took to manage the Dublin rising, and Phelim went to 
arrange an outbreak in Ulster, where his name and lineage 
carried a weight that his personal character did not war- 
rant. Brought up in England, a member of the Estab- 
lished Church, Phelim O'Neill had lost his fortune by dis- 
sipation and extravagance, and he now, by turning Ro- 
manist and rebel, sought to better his condition. 

The 23d of October was the night fixed for the rising 
in Dublin and in the provinces. O'More organized his 
part without much secrecy — the apathy of the government 
was so great that he believed he had nothing to fear. 



THE CIVIL WAR OF 1641. 59 

Since the recall of Wentworth, the government had been 
entrusted to two chief justices, Sir William Parsons and 
Sir John Borlase, who, taking their ease, left the Pale to 
care for itself, and it is to be feared they rather wished for 
a provincial rising. "The more rebellions the more con- 
fiscation," they were often heard to say, alluding to the 
custom of bestowing the confiscated lands of rebels on the 
officers of government who, in many cases, tolerated rebel- 
lion for the sake of the goods it brought them — and in 
more than one instance trumped up false charges of trea- 
son to secure the property of their victims for themselves. 
On the 22d of October a member of the conspiracy in- 
formed the justices of what was about to take place, and 
several persons were arrested, though O'More and the 
other leaders escaped. So far as Dublin was concerned the 
plot was now a failure, but all the Ulster risings came off, 
and the Irish took most of the towns, expelling the new 
settlers from them and from the country houses. Barbar- 
ous acts of cruelty are related against Phelim and his men 
— a rabble of about 30,000 untrained laborers — those "hew- 
ers of wood and drawers of water'' who had been permitted 
to remain in Ulster at the time of the confiscation. This 
was the hour of revenge, and egged on by Plielim they 
committed hideous cruelties. The season was exception- 
ally severe; the ground was hard and white with frost and 
snow. The pitiless Phelim turned the settlers from their 
homes, stripping even the women and children of their 
clothes, and driving them naked into the woods, to perish 
there or find their way as best they might to Dublin. 
Many died of cold and hunger o:i the grim journey. 
Many, too, were hanged, ripped up, or driven into the 
river by Phelim's baroarous rabble, whom he was pleased 
to call "The Catholic Army of Ireland." Here and there 
the Romish priests or some kind-hearted Catholic sheltered 
and eared for the wretched fugitives, but in the main the 
English of Tyrone had a bitter time of it. In other parts, 
and under better leaders, matters were different. In Cav- 
an, under Philip O'Reilly, the revolution was bloodless, 
and the settlers were safely escorted to Dublin by the rebel 
soldiers. 



GO IRISH HISTORY FOB ENGLISH READERS. 

The state of that city can well be imagined. Men, 
women, and children were pouring in naked, starving, 
wounded, and ruined; all they possessed had been taken 
from them, and their relatives had died or been murdered 
on the road. Many a ghastly tale of horror was told. 
Some of these tales were true, many were exaggerated by 
fear, horror, and the natural instinct that prevents tales 
from losing in the telling, others were false. So great was 
the exaggeration of horrors, that though the total English 
population of Ulster was not more than 20,000, it was 
stated that 145,000 had perished. Yet, with these tales 
of agony coming daily to their ears, with naked, wounded, 
starving fugitives trooping into Dublin, the infamous lords 
justices did absolutely nothing to quell the rebellion. 
Dublin they strongly fortified, and then not only refused 
to attack the rebels themselves but rejected the numerous 
offers of help that were made them by the loyal Anglo-Irish 
families. 

Parliament was prorogued, and the sitting of the law 
courts adjourned, on the ground that for the safety of 
Dublin all who had no business there must leave the city, 
those who had left their country seats and fled to Dublin 
for safety were now turned out and forced to return to 
their homes, which were by this time mostly in the hands 
of the rebels. The loyal Catholics were now on the horns 
of a dilemma; fate was driving them, as it had driven 
Desmond and Hugh O'Neill, into courses of rebellion, for 
the government not only did nothing to quell the rising, 
but had absolutely refused protection to loyalists from the 
province. The atrocities of Phelim, which had seemed 
unparalleled in loyal Dublin, sank into insignificance com- 
pared with the accounts given by the rebels of the barbar- 
ity of Munroe and of Coote, who, in quelling the Flstcr 
rising, ordered that no Papist should be spared, "if it were 
but the child a hand high, for nits will be lice;" and a 
bill which was then passed in the English parliament for 
the extirpation of the Romish religion led the Catholics 
to believe that this policy of extermination would shortly 
be applied to the whole Romish population. 

Driven undefended into the rebel quarters, and with 



THE CIVIL WAR OF 1641. 61 

England preparing a death-blow for their creed, it is small 
wonder that the loyalty of the Anglo-Irish lords gave way, 
and that in December both they and the Munstermen 
threw in their lot with the rebels. A pardon was now pro- 
claimed, but with limitations which made it worse than 
useless. Longford, Cavan, Meath, and Westmeath (in two 
of which comities there had been no rebellion), were the 
only places to which the amnesty was offered, and even 
there no freeholders were included, so the O'Reillys and 
others who had restrained the mob were to be hanged, and 
their lands confiscated, and any ruffians Avere to be par- 
doned, provided they had no property. 

The Roman Catholic archbishop of Armagh had con- 
vened a provincial synod, at which the war or rebellion of 
the Catholics was pronounced lawful and pious, and where- 
at arrangements were made for a national synod to be held 
at Kilkenny during the following year. In May, 1642. 
the synod assembled, and formed a provisional government 
for the control of the country until such time as a parlia- 
ment could be called. It was arranged that this provi- 
sional government should consist of twenty four members, 
six for each province, to be elected by a general assembly 
of fourteen Roman Catholic peers,- the Roman Catholic 
bishops and clergy, and 226 Roman Catholic deputies from 
the counties and towns. Arrangements were made for the 
settlement of legal and provincial matters, and the follow- 
ing October was fixed for the meeting of the first conven- 
tion, which was to be held at Kilkenny. The May synod 
also issued a manifesto explaining their conduct, and de- 
nouncing the murders and outrages which had disgraced 
the Catholic cause. But Phelim did not find this pacific 
denunciation binding to his conscience, and continued his 
barbarities till, in August, his cousin. Colonel Owen Roe 
(Red Owen) O'Neill came over from Flanders in response 
to an appeal for help from the old Irish rebels, and at 
about the same time a similar call from the Anglo-Irish 
was answered by the appearance of Colonel Preston in 
AVexford harbor, both leaders bringing with them about a 
hundred officers and a large supply of arms. Owen Roe 
O'Neill was disgusted at the undisciplined condition of 



62 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

the Catholic army, and he announced that if another out- 
rage were committed he would quit the country or fight 
for the enemy. Plielim now resigned the command, and 
eventually both he and O'More retired from the movement. 
Against the character of Owen Roe O'Neill not even the 
bitterest antagonist has ever breathed a word : as a general 
he was perhaps too cautious to suceeed in such an enter- 
prise as he was now engaged in, but he was courageous, 
truthful, high-minded, and merciful — and the very type 
of chivalry. His influence on the Ulstermen was magical; 
under his command the barbarous rabble soon became a 
respectable army. In the meantime Irish exiles were re- 
turning iii shoals, bringing with them arms and a knowl- 
edge of warfare acquired im foreign armies. 

In October the convention of Kilkenny assembled, and 
passed a number of useful measures; it excommunicated 
all persons guilty of outrage, and placed the command of 
the army in the hands of four generals. To Owen Roe 
O'Neill was consigned Ulster; Minister to Gerald Barry; 
Leinster to Preston ; and Sir John Bourke w r as made dep- 
uty commander of Oonnaught, the supreme command 
being reserved for the loyal and gallant earl of Clanrick- 
arde, Charles, most faithful subject. By this time the 
movement had lost its character of rebellion, and had de- 
veloped into a civil war, to which there were now four 
distinct parties. First, there were the old Irish who had 
began the rebellion, and who aimed not only at religious 
equality but national independence; to this party belonged 
the Ulstermen, headed by Ow r en Roe O'Neill. Then there 
was the Anglo-Irish party, to which Colonel Preston be- 
longed, and who only desired religious liberty, security 
for their property, the repeal of the Poyning's Law, and 
a general confirmation of the graces. This party were 
rebels against the government only — not rebels against the 
king — their interest was very different to that of the old 
Irish, but ties of religion, and in many cases of blood, held 
them together. The third was a small but very important 
party, and called itself the king's party; it was composed 
of Catholics and Anglicans, whose attachment to the king 
was great enough to overcome differences of race and creed. 



THE CIVIL WAR OF 1641. 03 

The leader was the powerful earl of Ormonde, who after- 
ward became lord deputy; other prominent members of it 
were the earl of Clanrickarde and the infamous lord Inch- 
iquin, ''bloody Murrough O'Brien." The fourth party, 
at first insignificant, but destined to crush the other three, 
was Parliamentary and Presbyterian. The Confederation 
of Kilkenny had been so ably conducted and managed with 
so rare a spirit of justice and toleration, that the convic- 
tion was forced upon Charles that his Irish subjects were 
quite capable of governing themselves. The royal army, 
too, was in a wretched state, and in every battle the 
"Confederates," as the Irish anti-government party was 
called, had been victorious. Charles now began to nego- 
tiate for a truce, and in September, 1643, the Confederates 
agreed to a cessation of hostilities for one year. This ces- 
sation was the ruin of the rebels, who, during the years of 
enforced peace, found time to foster those dissensions 
which always have been the ruin of national movements 
in Ireland, and Charles meanwhile was collecting soldiers 
and making plans of what he would do when the year ex- 
pired. He now appointed Ormonde lord lieutenant, and 
applied to him for advice. "Let them alone, and my 
countrymen will be sure to ruin themselves," replied the 
earl, with cynical wisdom, and in August the king, already 
perceiving the wisdom of this policy, proposed a further 
truce of six months. To this the Confederates agreed; 
they were by this time hopelessly disunited. The Pope 
had sent over his nuncio Eenunc'ni, and the Confederates 
had split into moderates and ultramontanes; they hoped 
to settle their difficulties in the prolonged truce, and, more- 
over, neither English nor Irish wished to fight in the win- 
ter, but when spring came a further truce was agreed upon, 
and hostilities did not begin again until June, 1646. Owen 
Eoe then marched against the Scottish general, Munroe, 
and, after crossing the Blackwater, gained a signal victory 
at Benburb. In O'Neill lay the only hope of the Confed- 
erates, now terribly weakened by internal disunion, and 
one party was trying to make terms with the Protestant 
and anti-Irish Ormonde, though he had declared that, 
rather than make terms with the Papists, he would deliver 



64 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

Ireland to those Puritans who were in arms against his 
king. 

Charles had long since commanded Ormonde to make 
peace on any terms, "and," said he "if the Confederates 
stipulate for liberty of conscience and the repeal of Poyn- 
ing's Law, I shall not consider it a hard bargain." For 
long Ormonde disregarded the king's command, but, at 
the close of 1648, he saw that the royal cause was too weak 
to make a longer resistance, so he agreed to make terms, 
and the Confederates, too weary of war to be deterred even 
by the threat of excommunication, signed a peace on the 
17th of January, 1049; but seventeen days later this was 
invalidated by the execution of Charles. In August of the 
same year, Cromwell, attended by his son Henry, Ireton, 
Ludlow, and others, went to Ireland to preach the gospel 
and quell rebellion. To attain these ends he took with 
him an admirably organized force of soldiers, a number of 
scythes and bullets, and a large supply of Bibles. The 
scythes and bullets hit their mark, but the Bibles were a 
dead failure. In the first place, few of the natives could 
read; in the second, English was an unknown tongue; in 
the third, the conduct of the Cromwellian troops was not 
calculated to ensure their reception as messengers of the 
Word or preachers of the gospel of peace. True, "Jesus 
and no quarter" was their battle-cry, but the association 
of that name with butchery savored to the Papists rather of 
blasphemy than holiness. 

Cromwell's first act was to lay siege to Drogheda, and 
after a time the garrison surrendered on promise of quar- 
ter, but no sooner had they laid down their arms than 
Cromwell took back his word and slaughtered every man, 
woman, and child in the city, so that five days are said to 
have been spent in this ghastly massacre. At Wexford, 
the same miserable scenes of treachery and butchery were 
enacted, and all over the country Sir Phelim's atrocities 
(which had already been paid off in the earlier part of the 
war) were revenged on innocent people who had had noth- 
ing to do with them. 

By the death of Owen Koe. in December, 1049, the Irish 
had been deprived of the man whose influence and talent 



THE PLANTATION OP CROMWELL. G5 

were the sole support of their falling cause. The loss of 
their leader and the ferocity of the Puritans broke the 
neck of the rebellion, and in the spring- of 1650 Cromwell 
left Ireland, making his son Henry lord-lieutenant, and 
his son-in-law, lreton, commander of the army. Ireton's 
measures were even more rigorous than those of the Pro- 
tector himself had been, and his death fifteen months 
later was a relief to his own party as well as to the enemy. 
Ludlow now 7 took the command, and marched to help 
Coote who was encamped before (lalway. 

Sore pressed and famine-stricken, and moreover terrified 
at the bloodthirsty reputation of Coote, in whom love of 
slaughter amounted to madness, (lalway surrendered in 
May, 1652. The ten years' war was at an end. How to 
make the wasted,, depopulated, famine-stricken country 
pay the debt incurred by the war was Cromwell's next 
consideration. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE PLANTATION OF CROMWELL. 

Desolate though Minister had been after the Desmond 
rebellion, the whole island was now in a worse condition. 
During the ten years' war, the country had been neglected, 
and the practice of burning the harvest had so greatly 
discouraged the few who were able to till the land that ag- 
riculture had been abandoned. All the live stock had 
been eaten up by the armies, and though after Cromwell 
had taken the command the soldiers had paid for all they 
had, the country was in so miserable a condition that many 
of the wretched natives were driven not only to eat the 
flesh of the many wolves that attacked them, but even the 
corpses of their neighbors. 

Cromwell felt that a people so reduced, so starved and 
plague-stricken, must of necessity submit to any measures 
he proposed , and his first idea was to utterly exerminate the 
Irish race; but this scheme he abandoned as being at once 
too difficult and too brutal, and he devoted himself to 



06 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

measures which, if more humane, were infinitely less effica- 
cious. 

An Act of Settlement was passed by the English parlia- 
ment in August, 1G52, decreeing that a full pardon should 
be extended to all whose possessions were worth less than 
£10. It was perhaps less mercy than self-interest that 
led to this step; for, had the laborers been removed, the new 
settlers would have had even to do the very roughest work 
for themselves, whereas these natives could now become 
hewers of wood and drawers of water for their new masters; 
but the clergy, as well as the landed proprietors, were ex- 
empted from this Act of Grace, both as to life and estates. 
If caught they would be hanged and their goods confiscat- 
ed; but several other classes profited by it in a greater or 
less degree. Officers of the royal army were to be banished, 
but were to retain the rcilue of one-third of their property, 
which was to be assigned for the support of their wives 
and children. Those also who had taken so small a share 
in the rebellion as to be considered entitled to mercy were, 
after forfeiting their estates, to receive land in Connaught 
to the value of one-third, but the most fortunate were 
naturally those who were held perfectly innocent — a very 
small class, as the payment of even a forced subscription 
to the rebel army was proof of guilt. These few innocent 
persons were also obliged to give up their lands, but they 
received territory in Connaught to the value of two-thirds; 
but to obtain these benefits from the Act of Grace, all 
landed proprietors had to give up their title deeds and re- 
sign all claim to their old possessions. Some defied Crom- 
well and kept their titles, but their lands were taken from 
them and they had to fly for their lives into the bogs and 
forests. Destitute and deprived of all they ever had, they 
took to a wild life of robbery, and were called Tories, from 
an Irish word meaning a plunderer. 

Of the Irish soldiers 45,000 were trans}3orted and took 
service in foreign armies, but of these the greater number 
were unable to take their families with them. These 
families should have been provided for out of that third of 
their property which was to be returned to them, but justice 
is a patroness of the powerful, and between six and seven 



THE PLANTATION OF CROMWELL. 67 

thousand women and children were kidnapped and sent 
to the West Indies, where the boys were sold for slaves to 
the sugar planters, and the girls and women reserved for 
a more dishonorable fate. 

All this time military tribunals were sitting to try such 
rebels as were, for various reasons, excluded from the Act 
of Grace, and from their blood-thirsty verdicts these courts 
were called "Cromwell's shambles.''' In the meantime, 
the government survey of the three provinces, Ulster, 
Leinster and Munster, was proceeded with; the acreage 
was noted and the land valued — the best at four shillings 
an acre and some as low as one penny; bog and unprofit- 
able land was thrown in and not counted. And now in 
the harvest time of 1653 the drums were beaten and the 
trumpets blown throughout the land to assemble the people 
to hear the news, that by the first of May next they must 
cross over the Shannon and go into exile in the rainy waste 
lands of Connaught. Oonnaught was from henceforth the 
Ireland of the Irish; fertile Ulster, green Leinster, and 
lovely Munster were for the Cromwellian settlers, who, by 
an Act of Grace, gave Oonnaught to the native Irish. This 
province was chosen for the Irish not only because it was 
the least fertile, but also, because, encircled by the ocean 
and the Shannon, it was most easily converted into a natural 
prison. 

The flight was to be in the winter, for after the first of 
May, 1654, any Irishman found within the three provinces, 
in England, or on the high seas, w r as liable to be put to 
death. 

Not only the old Irish families, but the Anglo-Norman 
settlers came under this proscription. The Fitzgeralds, 
Butlers, Bourkes, Plunkets, Dillons, Barnewells, Cheevers, 
Cusacks, who 500 years earlier had driven the Scoto-Miles- 
ians from their inheritance, were now to share the misfor- 
tune of their old enemies, and by a common misery to be 
united with those from whom they had held aloof. The 
men were to go first, to wrest the land allotted to them 
from its rightful owners, and to build shelters for the 
women, who were speedily to follow. Without servants, 
without money, without cattle, these Irish gentlemen — 



68 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

many of them with no knowledge of farming — went to earn 
their living in Connanght. Death was the penalty if they 
returned; death if they entered the gates of Galway, the 
one city of this penal settlement; death if they ventured 
within four miles of the sea or two miles of the Shannon; 
arid to enforce this regulation soldiers were planted round 
the river-side and the sea-coast. It seems as though a 
choice of deaths were offered to these unhappy creatures — 
the swift sword of the soldier or the slow starvation of 
hunger and cold in Connanght; and, to make matters 
worse, Cromwell's officers refused to stir in the matter of 
the allotment till they had been bribed by money or 
promises of a share of the land. Then arose a new diffi- 
culty, for the lands were found to be too small for the 
exiles; but many of them solved the question by quietly 
dying of cold and exposure. And now the women began to 
follow. The winter was wet, and the roads (neglected 
during the late war) nearly impassable. The country was 
famine-stricken, and the women, weakened by want and 
burdened with the sick, the aged, and the children, could 
not get away by the dreaded 1st of May. Very slowly the 
squalid procession dragged along the heavy, slushy roads, 
and many were still east of the Shannon when their time 
was up. So indifferent, so listless were they, that it was 
found necessary to hang some and imprison others to 
stimulate the nagging energy of the remainder. The 
walled towns which had been peopled with English settlers 
were cleared like the country, but the merchants, not being- 
entitled to the benefits of the graces, carried their enterprise 
to foreign cities. Thus the three provinces were cleared, 
and the lands so acquired were devoted to the payment of 
the adventurers who had advanced money to Cromwell, and 
the soldiers whose wages were hopelessly in arrears. The 
claims of the adventurers were first satisfied, and then lists 
were made out of the claims of each regiment. The regi- 
ments next drew lots for the various localities, and in the 
same way each man received by lot his own plot of ground. 
Company after company they were marched to their new 
homes, disbanded, and put in possession, but all this took 
time, and it was not till the end of ; 55 — three years before 



THE RESTOEATION. 60 

DromwelPs death — that the last regiments were disbanded. 
Many of the soldiers sold their plots at once to their com- 
rades and officers, but others settled into farmers, and 
numbers, sick of bloodshed, turned Quaker. But in their 
agriculture they were balked by the Tories, in their pastoral 
enterprises by the wolves, and their souls were distressed 
by the ubiquitous priests, who, by no fear of death, could 
be induced to leave the country. "We have now three bur- 
densome beasts to destroy," said Morgan, then mem- 
ber for Wexford. "The first is a wolf, the second a priest, 
and the third a Tory." A price was put on the head of 
each of these objectionable animals — a wolf and a priest had 
the same market value, £5 per head, and the wolves were 
gradually exterminated, but the priests seemed rather to 
increase than diminish. The price for a Tory's head was, 
for a public Tory, £20, but only 40s. for a private Tory. 
They, like the priests, were very difficult to catch, for the 
peasants who had been allowed to stay on the lands to work 
for the new settlers respected them as their old chieftains, 
and sympathized with their robberies. 

But in spite of extermination, exile, and kidnapping the 
old tale of degeneration was to be enacted. Many of Crom- 
well's soldiers married the daughters of their Irish laborers, 
and forty years later numbers of the children of these Puri- 
tan settlers were unable to speak a word of English. But 
long ere that time Cromwell had ceased to be troubled by 
questions of policy, for on September 3d, 1658, he died, 
and in 1660 the prince of Wales was proclaimed Charles 
II. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE RESTORATION. 



When the king came to his own again, the Irish royalists 
supposed that they also would be restored to those posses- 
sions they had lost through their devotion to his cause, 
and a few of them, acting with more zeal than discretion, 
proceeded at once to turn out the settlers by force. But 
though the number of these fanatics was small, they were 



70 IEISH HISTORY EOR ENGLISH READERS. 

enough to revive the old cry tliat the Irish Papists were 
rebelling again, and to serve the government with an 
illustration of the dangers of Catholic landlordism in 
Ireland. 

The Papists, in truth, had no idea of rebelling. They 
knew that if Charles had not been actually received into 
the Church of Rome all his sympathies were Catholic, and 
they expected to have their lands returned and their re- 
ligion respected. They petitioned for an immediate 
restoration of property, and proposed to pay a third of 
their income for two years to the Cromwellian soldiers and 
adventurers, and for five years to those who had bought 
lands during the protectorate. The soldiers and adven- 
turers were naturally furious at this proposal. The estates 
had been granted them in place of money advanced or owed 
as wage. The fortune of war, which had seemed just 
enough when they were the victors, now appeared barbarous 
and uncivilized. By the sword they had won the fertile 
lands of Ireland, and by the sword, ii need be, they would 
retain them. 

Charles was now in a difficult position, for Coote, 
Broghill, and others of his father's enemies, seeing the 
turn of the tide, had been foremost of those who had 
helped him. to the throne. Friends such as these needed 
buying, for their principles went with their interest. 
Their estates were therefore extended, and their titles 
confirmed. "Make much of your enemies, for your friends 
will do you no harm," was Clarendon's cynical advice, 
and in it Charles saw the only solution of the Irish land 
question. 

By every tie of honor the king was bound to reinstate 
those who had suffered for his father and himself, and at 
first he did not mean to desert them. He was told that 
there would be land enough to meet all claims, and he tried 
to believe the flattering tale. But the settlers resented 
being evicted, with the doubtful prospect of fresh lands 
somewhere, to be given some time; and Charles, remem- 
bering that these Oromwellians were powerful enough and 
resolute enough to raise a rebellion, acted on Clarendon's 
advice, and resolved to confirm their tenure. Jiis hold on 



THE EESTORATIOJST. 71 

the English throne was of the weakest; he feared to 
estrange any class, and he simply dared not favor the 
Catholics; whereas, no wrong, however great, inflicted on 
Irish Papists was likely to call forth resentment in Eng- 
land. Things being thus, and Charles being a Stuart, 
there could be no doubt which cause he would espouse. 

In May, 1661, the Irish parliament, after a lapse of 
nearly twenty years, was once more assembled. The 
business they were "to discuss was a bill of settlement con- 
firming the claims of the "new interest." In the Lower 
House, consisting almost entirely of Cromwellians, the bijl 
was easily passed, but in the Lords there was a hard fight; 
though by the influence of Ormonde it was pushed through. 
But lest this bill might provoke too much indignation 
among the Catholics, a Court of Claims was instituted, 
wherein certain of the Irish might have their case tried, and, 
if proved innocent, get their lands restored. None who had 
joined the rebels before '48, or who, in the final split of 
the Confederates, had adhered to the nuncio's party, or 
had accepted lands in Connaught, were allowed to plead; 
and with a view of cutting down the number of claimants, 
it was held proof of rebellion to have lived peaceably in 
the rebels' quartets even without taking any part in the 
war; therefore not only all Catholics who had taken arms 
when the English parliament had passed a bill for the 
extirpation of their religion were excluded, but also those 
who had dwelt quietly with the defenders of their faith. 
The gates of Dublin had been closed against all who had 
no business in the city, and as nearly the whole of the rest 
of Ireland had been in the hands of the rebels, it must 
have been difficult to find a home out of their quarters. 
The Protestant ascendancy thought it had little to fear from 
a Court of Claims bound by such restrictions; still, to 
make assurance doubly sure, no pains were spared to secure 
"friendly commissioners." Yet with all these precautions 
the court was crammed with applicants, and at the end of 
three months, out of about two hundred cases tried, 
only nineteen applicants were declared nocent, the vast 
majority being judged innocent, and in consequence, en- 
titled to the restoration of their estates. The Cromwellians, 



72 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

wild with anger and dismay, talked loudly of an appeal to 
arms, and Charles, seeing he must now definitely sacrifice 
one party, decided that the weakest must go to the wall. 
Houses, lands, wealth, children, liberty, and life these men 
had given up for him, and for the faith both he and they 
professed, yet when he had to choose between them and 
his father's executioners he did not hesitate which should 
he honored and which despised. The action of the Court 
of Claims was accordingly restricted to one year — four 
thousand claims had been entered, but only seven hundred 
heard when the court rose, and the hopes of more than 
three thousand unheard claimants were at an end forever. 

An "Explanatory Bill" was next passed, which provided 
that the soldiers and adventurers should give up one-third of 
their grant to increase the fund for reprisals, but in spite 
of this surrender hardly a sixth of the profitable land of 
Ireland remained to the Catholics, for in all cases of com- 
petition between Papist and Protestant all ambiguity was 
to be decided in favor of the Protestant. By special favor 
twenty persons were restored, but all other claims which 
had not been heard for want of time were held disqualified 
by the "Black Act," as the bill for closing the Court of 
Claims was called in Ireland. 

The land question was now settled, and after twenty-one 
years of fighting, confiscating, and restoring, the Irish 
Catholics held just half as much land as they had done 
when they sought to reinstate themselves by the rebellion 
of 1641. 

The tenure by which the new landlords held their estates 
had been so insecure, the fear of war and harvest burning 
so great, and the chance of eviction so considerable, that 
few cared to sow corn which their enemies might reap or 
destroy, and as a consequence the greater part of the country 
had been laid down in grass. 

The profits of agriculture Mere greater than of pasturage 
but the return was slower, and the mischief done by an in- 
vading army far greater. Moreover, larger capital is needed 
to work an agricultural than a grazing farm, for with 
ploughing, harrowing, sowing, weeding, cleaning, reaping, 
and threshing much more labor is required than on pasture 



THE RESTORATION. ?:> 

land. It is just for this reason that an agricultural 
country is more thickly and more intelligently populated 
than a pastoral one. Already, in Elizabeth's time, Spencer 
deplored the pastoral tendency of the Irish, bewailing the 
few and idle hinds needed on a pastoral farm compared to 
the many intelligent, industrious laborers on an agricul- 
tural one. Indeed, modern economists tell us that other 
conditions being equal, there is twenty times more 
pauperism in grazing districts. But the Cromwellian 
settlers could hardly be expected to enter into these con- 
siderations, and the population had been so thinned by 
war, plague, exile, and transportation, that the pastoral 
tendency of Ireland Avas not then so disastrous as it became 
at a later period. The sole wealth of the country at this 
time was cattle; rent, taxes, and subsidies were paid in 
this inconvenient coin, and the only trade of the country 
was the exportation of beasts to England and Scotland. The 
civil wars and confiscations that had ruined Ireland had also 
lowered the rents of England; but the politicians of the day, 
failing to realize that the unsettled state of the country was 
the cause of its poverty, assigned various reasons for the dis- 
aster, and at last the duke of Buckingham declared he 
believed the importation of Irish cattle the root of the 
evil. The idea was eagerly received. The Irish, good 
for nothing else, were a most convenient scapegoat. The 
importation was declared a "nuisance," and prohibited, 
and for the time Ireland was ruined. Subsidies and taxes 
could no longer be paid; the country was in the direst 
distress; but happily all classes and both nationalities were 
affected by this calamity, and Ormonde and other nobles 
set to work to help themselves and their country. They 
could not get the embargo taken off the exportation of 
cattle, but they persuaded Charles to allow Ireland free 
trade with foreign countries, ''whether at peace or war 
with his majesty" — a truly astonishing measure for that 
time, and one of hitherto unheard-of liberality. Ormonde 
also introduced skilled weavers both of woolen and linen 
to come over from Flanders and teach their art to the 
Irish, who, in retaliation for the Scotch embargo on cattle, 
refused to admit Scottish woolen goods. All classes com- 



74 LK15H HISTORY FOR ENGLISH KEADERS. 

bined to encourage Irish manufacture, and Ireland now 
seemed in a fair way to prosperity. The iniquitous sham 
Popish Plot caused some misery to the Catholics, but a 
reaction soon set in, and they enjoyed more liberty than 
they had done since the reign of Mary, when, in 1685, 
Charles died, and his brother James, duke of York, 
ascended the throne. James was an avowed Eoman 
Catholic, and was moreover the most unpopular man in 
England. He would probably never have been crowned, 
but that he w T as already fifty-two years of age, and had no 
legitimate son. His daughter Mary, wife of William of 
Orange, was next heir to the throne, and the English 
people preferred waiting till James's death for her ac- 
cession to a violent and unnatural usurpation. 

The accession of a Catholic king was naturally a great 
joy to Catholic Ireland, though James personally was 
disliked by, and disliked, his Irish subjects. On the other 
hand Protestant Ireland was much distressed at the ascend- 
ancy of a Papist, and the new interest quaked for their 
rights, but their fears were somewhat calmed by the 
appointment of the Protestant lord Clarendon to the office 
of lord lieutenant, though at the same time, Sir Richard 
Talbot, a most bigoted Papist, was created earl of Tyrconnel 
and given the command of the army. 

But James had the audacity to announce that he 
intended to establish religious equality, a joyful proclama- 
tion to Papist and Presbyterian, but greatly distrusted by 
the Episcopalians who saw in it the first step towards 
Catholic ascendancy. 

Probably they were right; James was not wise enough, 
or liberal enough, to care about religious equality for its 
OAvn sake, nor were the Catholics sufficiently ahead of the 
age to be content with simple justice. An illustrious Irish- 
man of our own day has summed up the relations between 
England and Ireland as "a course of brutal repression on 
the one side met by savage retaliation on the other," and 
the Episcopalians of James's time were well aware that 
their oppression had been brutal enough to call down a 
fearful retribution, should the Catholics ever be capable of 
revenge. Encouraged by James's favor the Irish rovalists 



THE RESTORATION. 75 

again petitioned for a reversal of the Act of Settlement, 
and a restoration of their estates, and it seemed likely that 
their request would be granted; for Clarendon was merely 
a tool in the hands of Talbot, who pushed forward the 
Roman Catholic interest. The army was first opened to 
Catholics, then Episcopalians were excluded, and the 
Monmouth rebellion was made the excuse for disarming 
the Protestants. After this injustice the Tories, embold- 
ened by the defenceless condition of the settlers and shielded 
by the peasantry, made raids on the Cromwellian farms 
and carried oif the cattle, and thousands of beasts were 
slaughtered out of pure mischief and hatred for their 
owners. The old proprietors now urged the tenants to 
refuse rents to the new interest on the plea that they had 
no right to the land; and as the disarmed Protestants 
dared not evict them, the laborers defied their masters 
openly. Murders and outrages were committed and a 
foundless rumor got abroad that the Papists intended to 
massacre the whole Protestant population, who fled to the 
towns or barricaded themselves in their houses in abject 
terror. At this juncture (Feb., 1689) Clarendon resigned, 
and Talbot was appointed lord lieutenant. 

This step confirmed the fears of the settlers; they were 
now convinced that the savage retaliation was to begin. 
Five hundred families left Dublin with Clarendon, and all 
the sea-ports were thronged with refugees. Still the ex- 
pected massacre did not come off, though the cattle- lifting 
and theft by the Tories continued. Talbot's administration 
was really alarming; every Protestant was turned out of 
office, all the privy councillors, judges, and mayors were 
Irishmen and Romanists. The English ascendancy was 
for the moment overthrown, and the lives and fortunes of 
the settlers were at the mercy of the natives, but in June, 
1688, the birth of a prince of Wales brought matters to a 
crisis. By the birth of a Catholic heir to the throne tho 
Papists felt secure; but the same event drove the English 
to action and brought about the revolution, for a number 
of English nobles invited the prince of Orange to come 
over and take possession of the country. These gentlemen 
were patriots, but most undoubtedly they were also traitors 



76 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

and rebels. They risked their life, their honor, and their 
possessions for their country and their faith, and their 
cause succeeded. The Irish, who remained staunch to 
James, risked as much in the same holy cause, and they 
lost; still, though both were patriots, it was the Williamites, 
not the Jacobites, who were the traitors. Ireland took no 
part in the invitation to William. War, massacre, and 
confiscation were associated in the Irish mind with Protest- 
ant ascendancy, and the majority knew nothing of the in- 
vitation to William till the news reached them that, on the 
fifth of November, "The Deliverer" had landed in Torbay, 
and that James had absconded to France. For a moment 
the Catholics were paralyzed by the blow, and the flight of 
James by no means added to the dignity of the situation. 
But Talbot immediately resolved to fight, and quickly 
raised 30,000 irregular troops of volunteers, or "rapparees," 
as they were called from the Irish name of the short pike 
or spear which in most cases was their only weapon. The 
news of the muster of these troops increased the terror of 
the Ulster Protestants. The youthhood of Derry and En- 
niskillen determined to protect themselves against the 
bloodthirsty Papists, and thus, from a courage born of des- 
peration, began those famous feats of long-sustained valor, 
the sieges of Derry and Enniskillen. Meanwhile, in the 
early months of '89, the conventions of England and Scot- 
land declared that James had abdicated, and offered the 
crown to William and Mary. 

James, either from cowardice or policy, resolved to make 
his stand on Irish ground. Neither the English nor the 
Scotch were unanimous in their wish for William of 
Orange, and James hoped his adherents in Great Britain 
would keep the Williamites busy till he could convert the 
Irish irregulars into an army serviceable for the invasion 
of the larger island. Personally he disliked the Irish; he 
cared nothing for their land difficulties, and certainly had 
he succeeded in regaining his throne he would not have 
granted them an independent parliament. The Irish lead- 
ers, on the other hand, had no taste for a policy which, 
even should it succeed, would reduce their country once 
more to a state of dependence — their aim was to regain 



THE REVOLUTION. 1 i 

their country for their own people. Thus the king, and 
the men who were to fight for him, had entirely different 
aims, and when, on the 12th of March, 1689, James landed 
at Kinsale he found that the old war of races had begun, 
and that half of Talbot's army was engaged before the walls 
of Deny, whose weak defences were bravely held by a force 
of seven thousand English settlers. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE REVOLUTION. 

On the twelfth of March, 1689, James landed at Kinsale, 
attended by his natural sons, the duke of Berwick and the 
grand prior Fitz James, and a few Irish and French officers, 
among them Generals d'Avaux and de Rosen, and about 
1,200 troops. James's misfortunes had wiped out from the 
memory of the Irish people the remembrance of his unpop- 
ularity and his cowardly flight from England. Blinded 
by their sympathies, they saw in James the noble upholder 
of their faith, persecuted for righteousness sake, deserted 
by his English subjects, and dethroned by his own daughter 
because of his steadfastness to his religion. The obstinate, 
weak-minded old coward was for them a saint. They for- 
got that they, like every one else, disliked and despised 
him, and they refused to see how intensely indifferent he 
was to their national aims and ambition. Irish hospitality 
and sympathy had prepared a warm welcome for their king, 
who enjoyed an ovation from Kinsale to Dublin, and a 
perfect triumph in the capital, where ten days and nights 
were spent in festivities, levees, and receptions. But there 
was more serious business to attend to, and parliament was 
called. James and the Irish entirely differed as to the 
US3S of parliament — to James it was a machine for wring- 
ing money out of his subjects; to them it was a means for 
wringing a constitution out of James. A long experience 
of the Stuart character made them well aware that when 
once James had got their money his interest in the Irish 
parliament would vanish, so they refused to make any ar- 



IS IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

rangement with regard to subsidies, till certain acts were 
passed. 

Their first care was for the repeal of Poyning's Act, by 
which, since the time of Richard II. , no act passed by the 
Irish parliament could become law, till it had been approved 
by the English privy council, by whom it might be altered 
and amended to any extent, but on its return to Ireland it 
might receive no further alteration, but must either be re- 
jected altogether or passed just as it was returned. Having 
disposed of this hated law, acts were passed to secure re- 
ligious equality. Since the reformation, Papist and Pro- 
testant alike had had to pay tithe to the clergy of the Estab- 
lished Church. The Irish Catholics now practically dis- 
established the Irish Church by decreeing that all persons 
should pay tithe to the clergy of their own denomination. 
Measures for the security of trade were also passed; but 
the great business of the session, from the Irish point of 
view, was the reversal of the Bill of Settlement, and it was 
decreed that all Catholics who had held land before Octo- 
ber, 1641, were to be reinstated. By the subsequent de- 
feat of James, these acts were rendered waste paper, but 
they are important historically as showing the views of 
Irishmen of that day with regard to the needs of their 
country. Parliament now voted to the king the subsidies 
of £20, QUO a month, but, James being dissatisfied with 
this sum, they consented to double the amount. It had 
been well for the reputation of the Irish parliament had it 
now risen, for their next measure was one of simple retal- 
iation—they attainted 2,000 persons of treason,and declared 
them subject to the penalties of that crime. The lists 
were drawn up with extreme carelessness — some names 
were inserted twice or even three times, many were put in 
from private spite, and a few of the most prominent Will- 
iamites were forgotten. All this time the war was going 
on, and the gallant Perry 'prentice boys — the descendants 
of the planters sent over by the city of London in the time 
of Charles I. — were valiantly holding the town. James 
marched from Dublin to the devoted city, and the Derry 
governor prepared to capitulate, but the mob followed up 
his negotiations with a storm of bullets, and elected a 



THE REVOLUTION. 79 

clergyman named Walter for their leader: and, despite the 
most terrible sufferings from starvation and disease, held 
the town till the end of July, when they were relieved by 
the English fleet. Long before then, James, discomforted 
by their warm reception, had returned to Dublin, leaving 
Hamilton in command. The Irish troops — raw, untried 
levies — were discouraged at the absence of their king, and 
they did not get on well with the French generals. More- 
over, they were extremely badly armed, having only a 
thousand really serviceable arms among thirty times as 
many men. They were, also, in want of money, and in 
every way the war went against them throughout the sum- 
mer, so that when in August William's general, Schom- 
berg, arrived with 4,000 men he hoped soon to close the 
campaign. But through the winter it was Schomberg's 
troops that suffered, and though the timorous James re- 
fused to allow his soldiers to attack the enemy in tlieii 
damp encampment, fever and disease fought for the Irish, 
and swept off half of Schomberg's forces before they could 
retire to winter quarters. 

William was becoming seriously alarmed about the Irish 
war, and his ill success there told against him in England. 
By losing Ireland he would lose England also; indeed, dis- 
content was so openly expressed that he thought of resign- 
ing the crown and returning to Holland. He had also an- 
other reason for wishing to settle the Irish question, for 
his troops were wanted for his war with France, the issue 
of which was terribly imperilled by the enormous force he 
was obliged to pour into Ireland. On the other hand, it 
was to the interest of Louis to prolong the Irish war. He 
could easily have spared men enough to place victory with- 
in reach of James, but, delighted at having the Williamites 
so plentifully occupied, he sent over only just enough arms 
and money to keep the Irish from the necessity of surren- 
der, and employed his own troops in pushing his own vic- 
tories in France. In the spring of 1690, the French gen- 
erals, d'Avaux and de Eosen, obtained their recall, but not 
before de Rosen had so far forgotten himself as to tell 
James that "if he had ten kingdoms he would lose them 
all." But Louis, who contemplated the annexation of 



80 LLUSJl HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

Ireland to France, felt that by this recall he had left the 
Irish too much their own masters, so he sunt over General 
de Lauzan, with 5,000 men; but this was rather a loss than 
a gain to the Jacobites as the same number of Irish, with 
Colonel Justin McCarthy, Lord Montcashel at their head, 
were, in exchange, sent over to France. The French did 
little good in Ireland. They did not know the country 
and they suffered much from hardship and the damp cli- 
mate, to which the Irish were quite indifferent. Through- 
out the spring Schomberg's troops were engaged in reduc- 
ing Charlemont, which was gallantly held by 0' Regan 
and a very small garrison. But though neither party 
made much jn'ogress in the war, the "English," as the 
medley of Dutch, Danes, English, and French Huguenots 
were called, were becoming so discouraged and demoral- 
ized, that William, hoping his presence would have some 
effect on them, landed at Carriekfergus on June 14, and 
found himself at the head of 40,000 men. 

The arrival of William in Ireland reduced James to the 
same helpless condition that his appearance in Torbay had 
done eighteen months earlier, but he made a desperate 
effort not to run away, and insisted on a battle being fought 
on the banks of the Boyne. Still he felt a depressing pre- 
sentiment of defeat, sent his heavy luggage on to Dublin, 
and chartered a ship to wait for him in Waterford harbor 
in anticipation of disaster. But notwithstanding these 
overwise precautious James was bent on proving his valor 
before William, and on the 20th of June the armies met. 
The Jacobites had the best position, the Williamites the 
larger force, and the inestimable advantage of being head- 
ed by a prince who knew no fear. Brave to recklessness, 
William, though wounded and in pain, was always in the 
front of the battle, leading his men and encouraging them 
at the post of danger. James watched his army from a 
safe distance, anxiously regarding the ever-changing tide 
of fortune, as now the Irish, now the English, got the best 
of the desperate encounter. At last, when the Jacobites, 
after seven hours' fighting, began to retreat in good order, 
James, wild with tenor, spurred his horse, and never 
stopped till, with a scanty retinue of contemptuous gentle- 



THE REVOLUTION. 81 

men, he arrived, blown and breathless, in Dublin city — 
the bearer of the news of his own defeat. The king thus 
flying, his »horse spent and heated, turned the defeat into 
a rout in the mind of the country. "Change kings with 
us," cried the sorrowful troops, "and we will fight you 
again;" but James was determined there should be no 
changing kings — he had had enough of this terrible war- 
fare. Next morning he fled, though no man pursued 
him, and never rested till the ship his foresight had pro- 
vided bore him in safety to France. 

Glad though he was to leave Ireland, his troops were 
still better pleased to be rid of him. But he had ruined 
his cause. Drogheda surrendered on hearing of the de- 
feat at the Boyne, and William marched into Dublin. 
The Irish now retreated to the south and west, and con- 
gregated at Athlone and Limerick, and round the latter 
city about 10,000 foot had gathered as if by instinct. De 
Lauzan looked with contempt on the antiquated fortifica- 
tions, and refused to try to hold the place. "Are those 
your ramparts?" he sneered to ISarsfield "Then the 
English will need no cannon; they can take them with 
roasted apples.-' Sarsfield had a higher opinion of the 
stronghold. But he allowed De Lauzan and his troops to 
go to France by way of Gralway and held Limerick alone. 
On the 9th of August, William appeared before the de- 
spised fortifications, but could not begin operations, as his 
siege train had not arrived from Dublin; nor did it ever 
reach the camp, for Patrick Sarsfield, by a daring and 
skillful maneuver, intercepted it, dispersed the escort, 
burst the guns, and burned the carriages and ammunition. 
More guns were sent from Waterford, and by the end of 
the month the damage was in a measure repaired; but the 
success of the adventure had restored the Irish confidence, 
and when, after a long bombardment, the English effected 
a breach and stormed the town, they met with a resistance 
so desperate and determined that they were forced to re- 
tire, and eventually the autumn floods compelled them to 
abandon the siege for that year. 

William's presence was urgently needed in discontented 
England, and having restored the courage and striven to 

6 



82 IKISH HISTOEY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

correct the morals of his troops, he now left Ireland, send- 
ing Edward Churchill, Captain Marlborough, with 8,000 
fresh troops, against Cork and Kinsale. Fortune favored 
the young commander, for both towns capitulated to him, 
and after a six week's campaign, he went back loaded with 
honor. Throughout the winter hostilities were continued, 
in which both armies suffered, though neither gained. The 
French help, so often looked for, was slow in coming. 
Old Talbot had gone in the summer to collect arms and 
money, but he still tarried, and the Irish were becoming 
a ragged, hungry, and penniless set of troops, when in 
February Talbot returned, bringing with him 14,000 louis 
d'or, and the news that he had left almost as much in 
Brest to be expended in oatmeal. 

The old tale of dissension was once more ruining the 
Irish cause. The French and Irish officers disagreed on 
every subject, and entertained for each other a most pro- 
found contempt, and matters were only made worse when 
in May Saint Ruth was sent over, and made first in com- 
mand. 

"William, pressed for money and soldiers, and "touched 
by the fate of the gallant nation that had made itself the 
victim of French promises," was anxious to close the war, 
and offered very fair terms to the Jacobites, but they, still 
hopeful of a complete victory, made no response. Through 
the early summer the war dragged on, the last engagement 
being on July 12, at Aughrim. Saint Ruth was in com- 
mand, and, jealous of his brother officers, had confided to 
none his plan of battle. Under him the Jacobites were 
gaining the day, and Saint Ruth cried out that they would 
drive the English back on Dublin; but as he spoke an 
English ball took off his head, and- the Irish, deprived of 
a commander, were utterly defeated. Only Oalway and 
Limerick now remained, and Gal way, having no ammuni- 
tion, was forced to surrender. The garrison asked and re- 
ceived good terms. They were to march out with all the 
parade of war and join the rest of the army at Limerick. 
That ancient city was now the only hope of the Jacobites, 
but it seemed to both parties that it would hold for ever, 
for the western side being uninvested by the enemy, food 



THE TREATY OF LIMERICK. 83 

and ammunition could be brought in from Connaught. 
The French fleet were expected daily, and the Irish knew 
that when winter set in floods and fever would compel the 
enemy once more to raise the siege. Still the prospect 
was a dreary one, and both sides were weary of the strug- 
gle. The Irish and French hated each other more cor- 
dially every day, and the former began to suspect that 
France intended to annex their country instead of helping 
them to win their independence. Next the Williamites 
gained the island part of the town, and though this was so 
separated from the rest of the city as in no way to affect 
its safety, it nevertheless depressed the troops, so that the 
commanders thought it would be better to close the war 
while their position was strong enough to ensure favorable 
terms. Accordingly, a truce of four days was proposed on 
the 24th September, and three days later the Jacobites 
offered to conclude a peace on condition of a general par- 
don for all past oifences, religious, civil, and military; of 
municipal liberty being granted to the Catholics; and sol- 
diers, if they wished, being received into their majesties' 
armies. The Williamites, delighted at the prospect of 
peace, assented to these terms, which were amended, 
drawn up into thirty-two articles, thirteen civil and nine- 
teen military, and on the 3d of October, 1691, the gener- 
als of both armies signed the famous Treaty of Limerick. 



CHAPTER XV. 

THE TREATY OF LIMERICK. 

The signing of the Treaty of Limerick was an event of 
enormous importance in Ireland, and its ruthless and 
dishonorable violation perhaps did more than all the cruel 
confiscations to ruin the country and foster that race-hatred 
which plays so prominent a part in the relations of England 
and Ireland. The treaty was a compromise, and, as such, 
not quite satisfactory to either party, for the Catholics had 
been fighting for land and liberty of conscience, and the 
Protestants for land and Protestant ascendancv, and the 



84 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

treaty, wliile it insured religious equality, conferred the 
land on the Cromwellian settlers. The civil articles were of 
the greatest general importance, as they affected the wel- 
fare of the entire country and should have secured it from 
religious persecution for ever. 

The first article provided that "the Roman Catholics of 
this kingdom shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of 
religion as are consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as 
they did enjoy in the reign of Charles II., and their 
majesties, as soon as their affairs will permit them to 
summon a parliament in this kingdom, will endeavor to 
procure the Roman Catholics such further security in that 
particular as may preserve them from any disturbance 
upon the account of their said religion." 

This was the whole of the first and most important 
article: we shall see later how it was kept. 

The second granted pardon and protection to all who 
had served King James, on their taking the following oath 

of allegiance: — "I, , do solemnly promise and 

swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their 
majesties King William and Queen Mary: so help me, 
God." The old oath of supremacy, which declared the 
English sovereign to be the supreme head of the church, 
had been the cause of much oppression to the Papists, for 
they, being unable to take any such oath, had, by its 
means, been excluded from honorable and valuable appoint- 
ments. To prevent a renewal of this tryanny, the ninth 
article provided that "the oath to be administered to such 
Roman Catholics as submit to their majesties' government 
shall be the oath aforesaid (of allegiance), and no other;" 
and this article was kept as faithfully as the rest of the 
treaty. Articles III., IV., V., and VI. extend the priv- 
ileges of the first two articles to merchants and other 
classes of men; the seventh permits Roman Catholic noble- 
men and gentlemen to carry arms and keep a gun in their 
house, and the eighth gives the right of removing goods 
and chattels without search. 

The tenth article guarantees that no person who hereafter 
breaks any of these articles shall cause any other person to 
lose the benefit of them; the two next stipulate for the rati- 



THE TREATY OF LIMERICK. 85 

fication of the articles within eight months. The thirteenth 
and last provides for the debts of Colonel John Brown, 
commissary of the Irish army. 

The nineteen military articles provided for the honorable 
exile of all who wish to leave the country and to serve in 
foreign armies, for the reception into William's army of 
any who wished to remain, and for the cessation of hostili- 
ties. The stone on which the famous treaty was signed in 
Ginkle's camp is still to be seen at the north end of 
Thomond bridge — a silent testimony to Irish misery and 
English perfidy. 

After the treaty had been signed, it was discovered that. 
in the fair draft, two lines had, either by accident or 
design, been omitted, and the Irish refused to evacuate 
the town till they had been inserted; but, scarcely was the 
ink of this second writing dry when the long-promised 
help from France sailed up the Shannon, with men, money, 
and ten thousand stand of arms — too late! Great was 
the grief in Limerick, and some of the officers were now 
for breaking the treaty and going on with the war, but 
Sarsfield indignantly refused to soil his country's name 
with so foul a stain of treachery. 

Sad and silently the Irish troops marched from the 
beloved city, most of them to take ship for France, and 
never again to see their native land. Some few took 
service under William, and many, warned that if once 
they enlisted in foreign service they must never more 
return, went quietly to their homes. Still the greater 
part — in all some twenty thousand men — enlisted in 
foreign armies, chiefly in that of France, where, under 
Montcashel, Clare, and Dillon, they laid the foundation 
of that Irish brigade to whose valor England owed many a 
defeat. For many years the supply of Irish soldiers in 
the French army was kept up by constant recruiting, and 
the number thus taken from the country must have been 
very great, since in the succeeding fifty-four years four 
hundred and fifty thousand Irishmen died in the service 
of France alone. 

Besides the tremendous loss of life, the war had cost 
England ten millions of money, and as an effort to recoup 



86 IRISH HISTORY FOB ENGLISH READEBS. 

some portion of this, 4,000 Irish were outlawed, and 
L,060,792 Irish acres, equal to 1,918,307 English acres, 
were confiscated — so heavy was the penalty for having 
been worsted in a fair stand-up fight. 

Since the accession of James J. the extent of the whole 
island, with an excess of 276,14*3 acres, had been confis- 
cated, for though some very few Anglo-Irish noblemen still 
retained their property, a good part of the country had 
been declared forfeit tAvice within eighty years. 

I have been able to find no account of the amount of 
land which changed hands during the confiscations of 
Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, nor of the lauds taken from 
the Connaught landlords by order of Cromwell for the 
Irish of the other three provinces, but lord Clare's table 
of the confiscations of dames I., of Cromwell, and of 
William, makes a lilting (dose to the unhappy history of 
the Stuart dynasty in Ireland. 

The acreage is given in Irish acres, which are to Eng- 
lish acres about the proportion of eight to thirteen. 

Ireland is estimated at 11,420,682 acres, and the confis- 
cations of the eighty years ending L6J91 amounted to 
11,697,629 acres, or an excess of 276,147 of the entire 
acreage of I re hind. 

After the flight of Hugh O'Neill, James L had confiscated 
the whole of Ulster, amounting to — 2,836,839 acres. 
At the Restoration there were set out by 

the Court of (Maims — — — ' 7,800,000 » 
And William's confiscations amounted 

to — — — — — 1,060,000 " 



Total, — — — 11,697,629 



CHAPTKK XVI. 

T II E P E NAI, CO D E. 

The ink of the Treaty of Limerick was hardly dry 
before the ninth article was broken, for at the meeting of 
parliament Roman Catholic peers and commons were re- 



THE PENAL CODE. 8? 

quired to take an oath which denied the doctrine of 
transubstantiation, and pronounced the sacrifice of the 
mass "damnable and idolatrous." No sincere Catholic 
would take such an oath, and by it Papists were for eve! 

excluded from the Irish parliament. 

The remaining civil articles of the treaty were soon dis 
regarded as ruthlessly as the ninth had been, and the Irish 
parliament began to build up a penal code against Koman 
Catholicism. Laws were made forbidding any Papist to 
send his child to be educated abroad, and at the same time 
Catholics were prohibited from keeping schools in Ireland. 
Statutes were passed authorizing a search for arms in the 
houses of Papists, either by night or by day. and forbidding 
makers of arms and weapons from receiving Catholic ap- 
prentices. The regular Romish clergy were commanded to 
leave the kingdom before the 1st of May, 1698, and bishops 
and priests of that creed were forbidden to enter the coun* 
try on pain of imprisonment and banishment for the first 
offence, and death for the second. 

The Irish parliament of those days was elected for an 
unlimited number of years, and was usually dissolved only 
by the death of the sovereign, and the parliament elected 
after the death of William, in 1702, sat throughout the 
fourteen years of the reign of Anne. 

At the time of Anne's accession the Protestants in Ire- 
land were only about a sixth part of the population. They 
were a small dominant class, holding nearly all the land, 
and alone eligible as members of either house of parliament. 
Planted amid a very naturally discontented population, they 
lived in a perpetual state of terror, and, with a ferocity born 
of fear, passed a crushing penal code against Catholicism. 
That the Papists would once more get the upper hand was 
the nightmare of the "Protestant garrison," for the Stuart 
cause was still far from hopeless — Presbyterian Scotland 
and Papist Ireland alike favored the pretender, whose claim 
was also supported by the powerful king of France — and 
until the suppression of the rebellion of 1745 there was al- 
ways the possibility, and the greater or less probability of 
the return of the Stuarts, with all iis attendant evils. 

Ireland was felt to be the weak point of the Orange party. 



88 IRISH HISTORY FOR EXGLISH READERS. 

the stronghold of rebellion, and this ill-conditioned state 
of mind was deemed to be due to the influence of the Cath- 
olic religion. It was easy for a staunch Protestant to per- 
suade himself that by oppressing Papists and degrading 
their social standing, he was furthering the cause of the true 
religion, and when his zeal enlarged his property, he fell 
that a blessing was upon him and that he had come in for 
the promised inheritance of the meek. So in Ireland the 
Protestants, and in Switzerland the Catholics, persecuted 
their neighbors in the interests of true religion. 

The oppressions of William faded into insignificance 
before the sterner penal code which was framed during 
the reign of Anne. 

To pervert a Protestant to the Roman religion was 
declared premunire, and punishable with imprisonment for 
life. Education was further prohibited to Catholics, for 
it now became criminal for a Catholic to employ or to act 
as a private tutor. Papists were forbidden to buy land, 
and were forced to leave their estates in gavelkind (that is 
in equal portions to all their sons) unless the eldest son con- 
formed, in which case he inherited the whole property, and 
could force his father to allow him a third of his income 
during his lifetime. No Papist could take a lease of mure 
than thirty-one years, nor could he raise money on his 
estates. The civil services, municipal offices, the army, 
the navy, the learned professions, save medicine, and all 
positions of public trust were now closed against the 
Catholics, who in addition to the oath of allegiance were 
required to take an oath of abjuration, declaring that "no 
foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate, hath or 
ought to have any power, jurisdiction, superiority, pre-em- 
inence, or authority, ecclesiastical or .spiritual within this 
realm." The bill which thus aimed a blow at the Catho- 
lics and all supporters of the house of Stuart, was sent over 
to England in this form, where a clause was added, provid- 
ing that "any person entering the courts, the civil service, 
or any place of trust, shall, in addition to this oath. 
receive the sacrament according to the rites of the Church 
of England/' The insertion of this clause raised a clamor 
among the dissenters, for by Poyning's Law the bill could 



THE PENAL CODE. 89 

receive no further alteration on its return from England, 
but must be received or rejected entirely; but rather than 
lose so glorious an opportunity of spiting the Catholics, 
the Irish parliament accepted it, and thus all Protestant 
dissenters were excluded from every public office, from that 
of lord lieutenant to that of common postman. 

Papists were next forbidden to employ more than two 
apprentices in any business except the linen trade, and 
were nominally excluded from the cities of Limerick and 
Galway. Catholic gentlemen were prohibited from carry- 
ing and from keeping arms in their houses, nor might 
they go more than five miles from home without a pass- 
port. Under these circumstances a horse, except for farm 
purposes, was a superfluity to a Papist, and he was not al- 
lowed to keep one over the value of £5. If a farm held by 
a Catholic yielded one third more than the yearly rent, 
any Protestant might, by simply swearing to the fact, evict 
the tenant and take possession; and any Protestant suspect- 
ing another of holding an estate in trust for a Catholic, 
might file a bill against him and take the estate from him. 
No Papist might, under a penalty of £500, become guard- 
ian to any child, and any child who conformed could de- 
mand of his Catholic father an allowance of one-third of 
his income. Any Protestant marrying a Catholic became 
subject to all the disabilities, and any woman who con- 
formed was freed from her Papist husband's control, and 
could demand an independent allowance. These regula- 
tions with regard to private life caused much heart-burn- 
ing and misery. The unloving wife, the dissolute and un 
dutiful son. had but to add the hypocrisy of a pretended 
conversion to their sins to reap a rich reward, and the last- 
hours of the dying Catholic were darkened by the thought 
that his children must be brought up in a creed which was 
to him heretical. 

But it was against the priests that the law was most 
severe. There were to be 3,000 priests registered for the 
whole country, and any unregistered priest was liable to be 
put to death. No bishops Avere allowed in Ireland, and 
when the priests died the irregisters died with them, so 
that had the Irish been a law-abiding people, Catholicism 



90 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

must soon have become extinct. Under this law a race 
of priest-hunters grew up, who were rewarded for their 
discoveries according to the standing of their victims. 
£50 was the reward for a bishop, £20 for an unregistered 
priest or begging friar, and £10 for a schoolmaster. But, 
besides these professional "discoverers," any Catholic over 
16 years of age could be seized and, on pain of imprison- 
ment, be made to swear when and where he had heard 
mass, and who was the officiating clergyman, and he, if he 
were not registered, was liable to lose his life. Still, though 
the registered priests died, Catholicism did not: bishops, 
priests, and schoolmasters continued to fulfill their duties 
though by so doing they became members of the criminal 
classes. They lived hidden in the mountains or in the 
wretched cabins of the peasantry. Sometimes they were 
caught, imprisoned, and banished, but the people were gen- 
era] ly very faithful to them; and the chief result of the code 
respecting the clergy was to create a hatred of law and foster 
a sympathy with crime; nor could the clergy preach obedi- 
ence to law, when by their very existence they themselves 
broke the law every day of their lives. It was impossible 
for a Catholic to obey the laws of his church and his country, 
and as his conscience forced him to break some part of the 
law of the land, it soon permitted him to disregard others, 
and if he were unlucky enough to be found out and ■ sent 
to gaol, there was no moral stigma attached to the name of 
criminal, since his religion was itself a crime. 

But the cup of Catholic degradation was not yet full; 
ignorant, poor, and criminal as were the Papists in the 
days of Anne, they still might, when otherwise qualified, 
vote at the election of members of parliament, and of civil 
corporations. But at the accession of George II. these last 
remnants of civil liberty were taken from them, and 
thenceforward they had no vote in the elections of members 
either of parliament or of civil corporations. Indeed so 
numerous were the restrictions on Papists that a judge de- 
clared that "the law did not suppose the existence of any 
such person as an Irish Roman Catholic, nor could they 
even breathe without the connivance of the government," 



THE COMMERCIAL RESTRAINTS. 91 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE COMMERCIAL RESTRAINTS. 

The penal code affected only five-sixths of the people of 
Ireland, but there were restrictions which fell on Catholic, 
Anglican, and Dissenter alike. England looked on Ire- 
land, not as a sister country but as a dangerous rival, whose 
prosperity must be checked for fear it should endanger her 
own. In the time of Charles II. cattle, meat, pork; ham, 
cheese, and butter had been excluded from the English 
market. In consequence of this embargo the Irish farmers 
converted their pasture into sheep walks, and soon produced 
the best wool in Europe. Quantities of it were exported 
raw both to France and Spain, but there was also a large and 
growing industry in the north, where woolen goods were 
manufactured both for home consumption and for exporta- 
tion. But this industry excited the fear and envy of Eng- 
land, and early in the eighteenth century the exportation 
of wool, either manufactured or in a natural state, to any 
foreign country or to any colony, was forbidden under 
penalty of £500, together with the loss of the ship and 
cargo. 

England thus secured to herself the monopoly of the best 
wool in Europe at her own price; the Irish, deprived of 
all other bidders, had to accept anything that she chose to 
offer, till at the time that French fleece wool was fetching 
2s. Gd. per pound, Irish was selling at fivepence. The 
farmers suffered greatly, but they repaired their loss as 
much as possible by smuggling wool to France, and a huge 
illicit trade sprang up between the two countries, till 
there was not a cave on the Kerry coast that was not 
stocked with wool. Every one — magistrates, landlords, 
priests, farmers, and peasantry — knew of and connived at 
the illicit trade. The coastguard was powerless to cope 
with the numbers of smuggling cutters which brought 



92 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

French wines and brandy, priests and prelates, to Ireland, 
and carried away wool, or a still more valuable commodity, 
entered on the ships' books and spoken of as "wild geese," 
but in reality soldiers recruited for the service of France. 

There was, however, a class that suffered much more 
deeply than the farmers — the weavers. These were chiefly 
Protestants, the descendants of English and Scotch settlers. 
From a condition of comfort, earned by honest industry, 
forty thousand of these poor creatures were in a day reduced 
to poverty and enforced idleness. There was no other trade 
for them to take up, so they had no alternative but emigra- 
tion. By the restrictions on the Catholics, England and 
the Protestant ascendancy between them had driven hun- 
dreds of thousands of men into the armies of France and 
Spain and Austria, to fight against, to kill, and be killed 
by Englishmen; and now, by a like short-sighted policy, 
the friendly northern Protestants were changed into 
enemies, who paid off old scores in the war of American 
Independence. 

The only great industries now left to Ireland were the 
linen and shipbuilding trades. In early times, Ireland had 
been a densely wooded country. Since then, much wood 
had been consumed in the working of mines, and successive 
generations of colonists, holding their land on insecure 
tenure, had hastened to realize what money they could by 
felling whole forests of timbers. Still in the early part of 
the eighteenth century there was plenty of good oak, much 
esteemed for shipbuilding. But England, too, was a ship- 
building country, and the fiat went forth that henceforward 
Ireland was to use none but English-built trading vessels, 
and was to trade directly with no country save England. 
By this law the sea-port towns were ruined, and their in- 
habitants, along with the shipbuilders and merchant sail- 
ors, were forced to emigrate, or try to live by agriculture. 

Her position and magnificent natural harbors seems to 
have destined Ireland to be a great shipping center, where 
English and American exports could be exchanged, but the 
shipping trade was to be henceforward an English mon- 
opoly, and Ireland was prohibited from sending or receiving 



THE COMMERCIAL RESTRAINTS. 93 

any article to or from any colony or foreign state. Calicoes 
and other cotton goods were already beginning to have a 
baneful influence on the linen industry, which was now 
further crippled by heavy duties on sail-cloth, and checked, 
striped, and colored linens. The mischief done to Ireland 
by these restrictions which deprived her of «W export trade, 
were of a deeper and more lasting nature than appears at 
first sight. For a country to succeed in manufacture, cap- 
ital, skilled labor and industrial habits are needed — habits 
of diligence, order, and thrift, which it takes generations to 
acquire. The principal industries of England were founded 
in the time of the Tudors. and have an almost unbroken 
history since those days. The Irish of the seventeenth cen- 
tury had made a heroic effort to create a national trade, but 
so soon as any branch succeeded it was stifled by the selfish 
and shortsighted policy of England. 

The Irish did what little they could for their ruined 
trade; they resolved "to burn everything that came from 
England but her peojjle and her coals;" and Swift, in his 
famous letters to the Irish people, wrote that, "even a stay- 
lace of English manufacture should be considered scandal- 
ous. ' ' But trade cannot flourish under such conditions; the 
home consumption was not great enough, especially as the 
whole nation Avas miserably poor; home manufactures made 
under so many disadvantages were dearer and less good 
than foreign ones; and goods were often sold as Irish, at 
Irish prices, that were made abroad. 80 trade, though 
bolstered up for a time, dwindled and sank. The peojjle 
who had once been employed in the factories were driven 
back on the country, and the competition for land was 
something unheard of. The little farms were let by auc- 
tion, and fetched more than they produced, so that the nom- 
inal rent could never, by any possibility, be paid. Evic- 
tions for nonpayment of rent became very frequent, and, 
as the century rolled on, great tracts of country were laid 
downMn grass. The Irish parliament now stepped in and 
passed a bill providing that at least five out of every hun- 
dred acres must be tilled, but England, having been in 
the habit of exporting wheat to Ireland, threw the meas- 
ure out. 

There was now no work to be got in the towns or in the 



94 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

country, and emigration was too expensive a luxury for 
the really destitute, Thousands who were willing to work 
were forced to beg, and, from a necessity, idleness grew 
into a habit. Fellow feeling made the poor wonderfully 
charitable to one another, and none who had a crust or po- 
tato grudged his neighbor half. One fatal consolation 
was left to this poor, starving nation; hunger could be sti- 
fled, cold be driven out, misery, want, and nakedness for- 
gotten at a very small expenditure, for, with all the com- 
mercial restraints that bound down Ireland, rum might 
be imported duty free. 



CHAPTEE XVIII. 

THE LAND DIFFICULTIES. 



Paralyzed by the penal code and the heavy commer- 
cial restraints, Ireland, at the beginning of the eighteenth 
century, was in truth a "most distressful country." The 
towns afforded little occupation for any one; but the army, 
navy, law, all civil offices, and wholesale trade being Pro- 
testant monopolies, the Catholics had to content them- 
selves with such small businesses as could be carried on 
with the help of two apprentices, or take to the over- 
stocked business of farming. The class of Catholic land- 
lords was rapidly dying out. Many eldest sons secured 
their inheritance by conforming to the English Church, 
and those who did not change their faith sank in a few 
generations to the class of farmers, for few Catholics had 
held estates large enough to bear even the first sub-division, 
and when the process had been gone through two or three 
times the owners sank to the condition of cottiers, or sold 
their little properties. Papists might neither buy land nor 
hold it on a long lease, so all that came into the market 
was of necessity bought by Protestants. In many cases 
land was acquired simply as a speculation; it was cheap 
because as five-sixths of the population were forbidden to 
purchase, the market was restricted; it could be let at a 
high rent because five-sixths of the people being by law 



THE LAND DIFFICULTIES. 95 

prohibited from almost every occupation but farming, 
there was immense competition, and people were willing 
to offer exorbitant rents. But many a man who had 
bought large tracts of land disliked the thought of living 
on his new possession, the trouble of collecting rents from 
small tenants, so estates were often let on long leases to 
middlemen at a very moderate rental. These middlemen 
sub-let the land to tenants or to other middlemen at a 
higher rental, till on many properties there were five or even 
six middlemen between the landlord and the actual tiller of 
the soil, who, to enable all these deputies of deputies of 
deputies to make a living, was charged an extortionate 
rent, often a rack rent — that is, a rent higher than the val- 
ue of the total production of the land. Such a rent could 
not be paid in full, even in a good season. The middle- 
man got as much as he could out of the tenant, and the 
tenant paid as little as he could induce the middleman to 
accept. Even with a good will the wretched middleman 
could not afford to be merciful, as his living depended on 
the difference of the rental paid him by the tenants and 
that which he paid the middleman over him. In good 
seasons the tenants managed to rub along somehow, but 
in bad years they were reduced to a fearful state of misery, 
often culminating in eviction and starvation, and there 
were several actual famines. The most terrible was that 
of 1746, when mothers devoured their children, and chil- 
dren their dead mothers. Docks, nettles, and shamrocks 
were the staple food of many thousands, and when at 
length fever, dysentery, and exhaustion put an end to the 
sufferings of these poor creatures, the thin corpses were as 
green as the unwholsome food on which they had. pro- 
longed their miserable existence. 

Extortionate rent, whose payment was enforced by threats 
of eviction, was not by any means the only trouble of the 
Irsih farmer and cottier; short leases, or still worse, yearly 
tenancy hampered him, and there was the great grievance 
of the tithe which every one was forced to pay to the An- 
glican vicar or rector of his parish. Many of these clergy 
held several livings, and, having no congregations, lived 
entirely in England; it was therefore inconvenient for 



90 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

them to collect the tithes themselves, and they usually 
employed a "tithe proctor" who paid a certain sum to 
the clergyman, and whose profit depended on the degree 
of rigor with which lie collected his tithe. 

That this tithe was a fruitful source of ill-feeling can 
well be imagined; the small farmer barely able to find his 
children bread, and bound to maintain his own priest, bit- 
terly resented this tax to the absentee heretic whose face he 
never saw. Moreover, the tithe was levied with great in- 
equality and injustice. Munster, as a whole, paid one-third 
more tithe than any other province, and some parts of 
Minister were more severely rated than others. The great 
tithes of wheat and corn which were general throughout 
the country were usually paid with a fairly good grace. It 
was the potato tithe, a tax almost peculiar to Minister, that 
was so desperately resisted, as being a weight which fell 
most heavily on the poorest. Pasturage was most unjustly 
exempted by a law made in 1785, so from that time the graz- 
ier had a clear advantage of ten per cent, over the agricultur- 
al ist. This naturally pronrpted men to lay down their 
land in grass, and another inducement to Catholic farmers 
was the law which prohibited them from making a profit 
of more than one-third of the rent. The gains of pastur- 
age are less easy to ascertain than those of agriculture, so 
the Papist farmer, who by luck, skill, or the lenieucy of 
his landlord, cleared a large profit, laid down his land in 
grass that he might run less chance of being discovered 
and evicted — a fate from which, in this case, his landlord 
was powerless to save him. 

The tithes and the penal code were slowly turning Ire- 
land into a grazing country, but when, in the middle of 
the century, the restriction on the importation of cattle, 
meat, butter, and cheese into England was removed, in 
consequence of murrain which had destroyed English 
beasts, a perfect grazing fever set in. While the land was 
being turfed and prepared, the effect of this change was 
not apparent, but the process once completed tenant after 
tenant was evicted, homestead after homestead destroyed, 
common and waste lands, whereon hitherto many a poor 
man had kept his goat or cow, were enclosed, and thou- 



THE LAND DIFFICULTIES. 9*] 

Bands of families, through no fault of their own, were 
turned out on the roadside, without even such funds and 
shelter as have, of late years, been provided for their suc- 
cessors by a disloyal and illegal organization. 

Estates that had supported twenty or thirty laborers 
could now be tended by two or three herdsmen, so nine 
out of every ten men on the transformed estates were dis- 
charged, and, with their families, turned out of their 
homes. 

Emigration was then far more costly than now, and 
therefore impossible to the greater part of the tenantry, 
who nocked into the towms, hoping for work. But trade 
was so shackled and bound down that there was no work 
even for skilled artisans, and for these evicted tenants no 
hope or chance of work. Starvation was very near, and 
fever soon laid her burning hand upon the little children. 
The Irish cottiers of the eighteenth century were well used 
to hardship; the poorest food, the scantiest dress, the rough- 
est shelter, were all they had known; but the wail of the 
dying children, lying shelterless and starving in the ditch, 
was more than they could bear. The old cabin had been 
pulled down to prevent the return of its tenants, and on 
its site stood the new cow-house and the sheep-pen. 
These men were very ignorant — in that, at least, they 
obeyed the law which forbade education to Papists. They 
knew nothing of economic principles, or of the law of 
demand and supply; they had never even heard that the 
the object of farming was to produce the most with the least 
possible amount of labor. As Catholics, they were forbid- 
den the right of public meeting or of framing petitions, but 
in any case they would all have been dead long before 
any petition could reach that tender mother of the poor — 
the State. 

They had no hope but in themselves, no friend but the 
priest, a man as poor, as hungry, often nearly as ignorant 
as themselves. As for the enemy, the cause of all their 
misery, did not the new cow-house and the sheep-pen tell 
them who he was? The landlord, the middleman, the 
tithe proctor, the parson, and the priest, all these they 
had managed somehow to pay, and had still kept a roof 

7 



98 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

above their heads; but this gentle, silent, innocent sup- 
planter had deprived them of all they ever had. Moreover, 
this enemy was food himself, food in abundance was com- 
fortably housed around them, while they, their wives, and 
little ones, were dying in agonies of hunger and of cold. Si- 
lently, by the cold light of the winter moon, the men arose 
and killed the cattle in hundreds and in thousands. The 
Munster hillsides rang with the cries of the dying beasts, 
whose owners, paralyzed with fear, lay quaking in their 
beds. 80 began the famous Whiteboy outrages; and then 
arose that spirit of desperation and revenge, which led not 
only to a wholesale slaughter of cattle but to crimes of a 
far worse nature. Murders, maiming, and mutilations 
were dealt out with horrible barbarity, as punishment to 
men who laid down their land in the grass, to tithe proc- 
tors, and to several extortionate clergymen and priests. 
The law at first was powerless, for most of the peasantry 
sympathized with the Whiteboys, and such as had the will 
had not the courage to give them up, for Whiteboy revenge 
was far more certain and more terrible than legal penalty. 
Stringent laws were passed against Whiteboyism, and many 
offenders were hanged or shot; still it was years before the 
organization was suppressed. 

At the time that the Whiteboy outrages were terrifying 
the Munster graziers, two organizations were made by the 
Protestant tenantry of Ulster. The roads were in those 
days repaired by public unpaid labor, every man being 
forced to give six days' work yearly. At sowing time, at 
hay time, or at harvest he might be required to give his 
week's labor. The rich were, by custom, not by law, ex- 
empted, and the cottiers naturally contended that the rich, 
who used the roads, should be forced to pay a substitute to 
do their share of the work for them, and not leave the bur- 
den entirely on the poor. To right this grievance a great 
number of tenants pledged themselves to resist the law till 
all classes were made subject to it. Members of this organ- 
ization wore an oak branch in their hats, and thus obtained 
the name of "Oakboys." 

The "Steelboys" were more like the Whiteboys of the 
south. They were tenants of Lord Donegal who, when his 



wood's halfpence. 99 

leases expired, instead of raising the rent, demanded a very 
high premium for their renewal. This the tenants could 
not pay, though they would willingly have acceded to an 
increase of rent. They were evicted, and their farms taken 
by capitalists and laid down in grass. The wretched ten- 
ants resisted as desperately and as vainly as the Whiteboys 
of the south, and, like them, gained nothing by their law- 
lessness but the gallows and the gaol. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

wood's halfpence. 



The Whiteboy movement brings us clown almost to the 
time of the declaration of Irish independence, but we must 
now see what was passing in Dublin and the great cities in 
the early part of the century. 

The ever-increasing disabilities of the Catholics, their 
consequent poverty, ignorance, and social stigma, drove 
them more and more from the towns into the country and 
into the armies of foreign powers. In the country, the bet- 
ter class of Catholics often contracted friendships for, and 
even intermarried with their Protestant neighbors, till in 
many places the greater part of the penal code was a dead 
letter. But in the towns the "Protestant garrison'' had 
society enough among themselves without admitting the 
"common enemy," and the contempt in which Catholics 
and Jacobites were held was such that "no Papist may pre- 
sume to shew himself even in the galleries of the houses 
of parliament." 

The political history of Ireland in the eighteenth cen- 
tury is therefore entirely the history of the Protestant as- 
cendancy and of Englishmen who were sent over to fill the 
best offices, for to be born — even of English parents — in Ire- 
land was to begin life heavily, handicapped. Throughout 
the century the lord lieutenant and the primate were always 
English, and the only Irishmen who held office as chief 
secretary and lord chancellor were Clare and Castlereagh ; 
the bishop, justices, and other high officials were also most- 



100 luisil IUSTOKY FOB ENGLISH READERS. 

I\ English, bo the greal and natural discontenl of bhe coa- 
forming Irish. 

At the end of bhe seventeenth and bhe beginning of bhe 
eighteenth century, bhe hatred and fear of Popery was so 
strong among bhe Anglicans bhat all other distinctions 
were forgotten; hut as years rolled on common nationality, 
common though unequal oppression, ami common poverty 
softened party feeling, and the unbroken loyalty <>f the 
Catholic killed the tear and hatred of the Protestant. 
Common interest also grew up between the two creeds. 
There was Ha 1 vast smuggling trade to which all classes 
were party, and in L722 the nation laid aside its animosi- 
ties, to wage a common war againsl "Wood's Halfpence." 

For many years no copper had been coined in Ireland, 
and one William Wood, an English hardwareman alleging 
the scarcity <>\' copper coin, procured a patent for coining 
£108,000 sterling of halfpence and farthings to puss as 
current money. The whole patent was an infamous job, 
and Wood must have hoped to make an extortionate profii 
since he thought it worth while to pay £30,000 for the 
patent, a profit which, if it was to he made oil' the coinage 
(»! poor penniless Ireland, ought certainly to haw gone to 
her revenue and not io the pocket of Mr. William Wood 
of London. Moreover Ireland did not need a tenth part 
of the copper which Wood was to supply. In England, 
the whole of the copper never exceeded a hundred! h part 
Of the currency, and exclusive of the brass already in use, 
ci os. ooo was more than the quarter of the currency of [re- 
land. Jonathan Swift, then dean of St. Patrick's, had 
already taken a lively interest in Irish politics, and had 

exhorted the people to use and wear oiil\ ^ un ^ of Irish 

manufacture, lie threw the whole of his energies into a 
war againsl Wood's halfpence, which he argued would ruin 
the already poverty-stricken country. Writing in the char- 
acter of a draper, Swift drew a lively, hut not a \ery scrup- 
ulous, picture of the ruin the copper would bring with it. 
and exhorted every one to refuse to take the money, for by 
I he provisions of t he patent no one was bound to receive it . 
The whole nation responded loyally to Swift's appeal; and 
for a time political animosities and distinctions of race 



Mil 

and creed were alike forgotten in the bond oi common 
nationality. Wood's copper was entirely "boycotted/' 
and had to I"' withdrawn; and, though Wood was compen- 
sated oul of the Irish revenue, [reland felt that she had 
achieved a nationa] victory. Bui the matter did not. end 
here, for it created aclasE of men and founded a new party 
in politics. 

The "English garrison" had realized that [reland 
after all, their country, and that her interesl was theirs, 
and from the copper war arose the "Patriot Party," which 
from t hat t ime hi d to be a power and influ- 

m [reland. Th< of I he agitation had all o l< d 

men to believe thai in agitation and pa i tance lay 

the redri for Irish grievances. A long string of confis- 
cations and disabilities was all [reland had got by armed 
ance, but by agitation Irishmen had al lasl gained a 
victory; a aew way had been discovered, a new era in [rii h 
hi tory began. 

The English and Prote tanl dean Swift had created a 
new class of politicians the [rii b .<; 



OHAPTEB XX. 

'til!. PATRIOT PARTY. 



The national spirii created by the agitation against 
Wood's halfpence never again forsook the Protestanl 
rison." Their hatred of 1 he Papist softened into contempt- 
nous indifference among the worldly, and among the r 
ious into a de tire to "compi i I hem to come in" to the pale 
of the Establishment. The gentler spirii the 

Anglicans, the good, high-mindi d bishop Berkeley, primate 
Boulter, and others, felt thai it was not by penal codi 

•iit ions thai i be made, and in 

the hope of mouldi z in the ways of the estab- 

■nt, charl . founded a 

after t b< ar. 

tally free daj 
where children of ev< ry creed could I 



102 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

ed in the orthodox Anglican faith, but in this form thej 
did not answer. Many of the Catholic poor preferred ig- 
norance to even a risk of heresy, and among such children 
as frequented the schools, home influence was far stronger 
than any that could be gained at a day school. Accord- 
ingly the institutions were changed to boarding schools, 
where only Papists were received, and that they might be 
utterly cut off from the pernicious influence of home, the 
children were sent to distant parts of the country. The 
effect of this may easily be imagined: the charter schools 
became more dreaded than the gaol. Only in time of 
famine could the parents be induced to send their children 
to the institutions, and when once the hour of starvation 
was passed they rescued their little ones from the wiles of 
the heretic. Perhaps had the schools been well managed, 
and the wan little children returned home fat and rosy, a 
different feeling would have grown up; but the sad old 
tale of funds misappropriated, officials growing fat and 
children thin, haunted the charter schools, and Howard, 
who visited them toward the end of the century, de- 
scribes a scandalous state of dirt, hunger, misery, and 
squalor. 

A more successful, because less bigoted, effort of patriot- 
ism was the Dublin Society, which was founded about the 
same time as the schools, and which had for its object the 
increase of industrial knowledge and the encouragemnt of 
agriculture and manufacture in Ireland. Each member 
on his admission chose some branch of natural history, 
husbandry, manufacture, agriculture, or gardening, about 
which he learned all he could, and then drew up a report 
which was read to the society, and published in the public 
prints. For many years hardly a newspaper appeared that 
had not some hint for the struggling manufacturer, some 
recipe for the farmer, some bit of knowledge about manure, 
or the rotation of crops. Farming lectures were delivered 
throughout the country, and though want of capital pre- 
vented many of the farmers applying what they learned, 
much useful knowledge was diffused. Prizes were given 
for Irish lace, homespun, and silks, and thus a little zest 
was thrown into the languishing manufactures, and it is 



THE PATRIOT PARTY. 103 

probably largely owing to the efforts of the Dublin Society 
that Irish industry did not utterly collapse. 

The patriotism of this was much purer and wider than 
that which inspired many politicians of the patriot party, 
for not a few of these used their patriotism merely as a 
stepping stone to office, for the corrupt government was 
willing to buy at a high price the silence of malcontents 
who exposed the abuses of the pension lists and kindred 
waste of public money. 

The patriotism of Swift himself, though sincere, was 
not of an exalted nature. For the Anglicans only he 
reserved his sympathy; and though all the severe laws 
against the Catholics were passed during his lifetime, he 
never wrote a word for the defence of his oppressed 
countrymen. 

After his death, his place as leader was filled by a man 
as honest, more bigoted, and infinitely less able than the 
old dean — Charles Lucas, a Dublin apothecary, now chiefly 
remembered as the founder of the Freeman's Journal. 
Lncas entered the Irish parliament in 1745, four years 
before the death of Swift. His career was stormy, and at 
one time he had to leave the country for some years. On 
his return he was the idol of the people, and again headed 
his party in parliament; still, the patriots were a small 
minority, never throughout the thirty-two years of George 
II. 's reign able to count on more than eight-and-twenty 
votes in a parliament composed of three hundred members. 
The poAvers of the Irish parliament, already stunted by 
Poyning's Law, were further curtailed .by an English bill, 
passed in the time of George I., by which the English 
parliament was enabled to make laws to bind the Irish 
people, and the Irish House of Lords was at the same time 
deprived of its right to judge, or affirm, or reverse any 
judgment, so that the Irish parliament became nothing 
more than a provincial assembly, whose decision was always 
liable to be overruled by the superior powers of the English 
legislature. Its construction was also extremely corrupt; 
not even the Protestant minority was fairly represented. 
Of the three hundred members, two hundred were elected 
by a hundred individuals, and nearly fifty by ten. Two 



L04 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

hundred and sixteen members were returned for closed 
boroughs and manors, mostly owned by members of the 
House of Lords. The earl of Shannon commanded sixteen 
seats, lord Hillsborough nine, the Ponsonbys fourteen, and 
so forth. The House of Commons, instead of representing 
the nation, represented a few favored peers, who made 
large sums of money by the sale of their seats. 

Both houses were intensely anti-Catholic, and many of 
the most oppressive clauses of the penal code originated in 
the Irish, not the English parliament; and the policy of 
grinding down and degrading the Papists was usually 
advocated and supported by the viceroy, the court, and 
the primate. But in seasons of political crises conciliation 
was had recourse to. and this was notably so during the 
rebellion of 1745. Encouraged by the news of the defeat 
of the English at Fontenoy, the Scotch and English 
Jacobites look up arms, ami a rising was daily expected 
in Ireland. Chesterfield was accordingly sent over as 
viceroy, with orders to conciliate the Catholics. No rising 
took place in Ireland; by a little kindness and humanity 
the danger was staved oif; but while England was torn by 
rebellion, Catholic chapels were opened in Ireland, mass 
was said publicly, and priests and friars walked about in 
their habits. But Prestonpans sealed the fate of the loyal 
Irish, as well as of the Scotch rebels; Chesterfield was 
recalled, and the old penal system set up on its feet again. 

Meanwhile the little band of patroits continued w T hat 
seemed a hopeless agitation for the control of the national 
revenue and the reform of the pension list. 

But hopeless though the struggle seemed, the party was 
gaining ground and was joined by several of the powerful 
nobles, among them the earl of Kildare, eldest son of the 
duke of Leinster, who was head of the historic house of 
Fitzgerald. Englana now felt how dangerous was the 
almost unlimited power of the aristocracy to return members 
of the House of Commons. A combination of some half- 
dozen peers might entirely change the character of the 
lower house, and to meet this # possible difficulty a legisla- 
tive union was proposed, but the idea w T as received in 
Ireland with such evident hatred that it was abandoned, 



THE PATEIOT PARTY. 105 

and in the following year (1760) the death of George II. 
dissolved the parliament, which had sat every alternate 
year throughout the 32 years of his reign. In the parlia- 
ment elected at the accession of George III., the patriots, 
for the first time, became a formidable minority. Most 
members of that party who had sat in the last parliament 
were returned again, and several able men were now elected 
for the first time: among these new politicians were Denis 
Daly. Hussy Burgh, and Henry Flood, a young man of 
seven-and-twenty. It was very clear to the patriots that 
little reform could be hoped for so long as parliaments 
were elected for the lifetime of the king. .Members after a 
time became lukewarm, their zeal not being renewed by 
the prospect of a general election; constituents had no 
chance of freeing themselves from an unsatisfactory repre- 
sentative, and the opposition, once the opposition, was 
always the opposition. Lucas brought in a bill for limiting 
the duration of the Irish, like the English, parliament to 
seven years. Each session the measure passed through 
the Irish houses, but was three times thrown out by the 
English privy council. The fourth time it was sent up it 
passed, merely altered from a septennial to an octennial 
bill, and parliament, having now been elected eight years, 
was dissolved and the first limited parliament elected. 
The patriots were returned in greater force than before. 
The septennial bill had been a popular measure, but the 
great cause of the popularity of the party was their agita- 
tion for the reduction of the Irish pension list. By a 
curious irony of fate, Ireland was forced to provide for the 
poor relations, cast-off mistresses, and natural children of 
the monarchs of that dynasty whose accession she had so 
desperately resisted, and the Irish nation was made year 
by year to increase the pension list, which now stood at 
£72,000 per annum, whereas the king's private revenue 
for Ireland — whereon alone it could be charged with 
decency— amounted only to £7,000, so that £65,000 of the 
public revenue was yearly devoted to this purpose — "exclu- 
sive of French and military pensions. The reduction of 
this list, and the reform of the army which, by mis- 
management, cost nearly double what it ought to have 



106 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

done, were benefits easily understood, and the agitation of 
the patriots, though utterly ineffectual, made the party 
very popular throughout the country. After the elections, 
they continued the pension list agitation, and this new 
parliament began a repeal of the penal laws. The first 
concession to the Catholics was a small one; it only allowed 
them to take long leases of bog, provided the bog were at 
least four feet deep and a mile outside a town, but it paved 
the way for other boons, and accustomed peojDle to the idea 
of the gradual repeal of the code. 

In 1775 a new and very important figure made his first 
appearance in politics. In that year Henry Grattan was 
nominated by lord Chariemont to represent the borough of 
Charlemont. The young politician, though only twenty- 
five years of age, at once took a prominent place in the 
patriot party, and among the orators of his day. He soon 
succeeded Flood as the idol of the people, for Flood had 
lost much of his popularity by taking office under govern- 
ment. 

When Grattan entered parliament, England was already 
in serious difficulties with the American colonies, and in 
the following year the war of American Independence broke 
out. Ireland had now to decide whether she, struggling 
for her own independence, should raise her hand against a 
colony where precisely the same struggle was going on, or 
whether she should look on in silent sympathy. The gov- 
ernment proposed sending four thousand Irish troops 
against the insurgents, and on this question Flood and 
Grattan disagreed with a violence that rendered impossible 
the continuance of the friendly relations that had hitherto 
subsisted between them. 

Flood and the government triumphed; the troops went, 
and Ireland, being now involved in the war, was prohibited 
from exporting salt meat to the colonies. 

Trade had been bad enough before the war, but it was 
now at a deadlock — there was no money, public or private, 
and the Irish government was forced to borrow both of 
England and of a private Dublin bank to carry on at all. 
In the autumn of '77 came the news of the loss of Saratoga, 
and also that despotic France had joined the insurgents 



THE VOLUNTEERS. 107 

in their war for liberty. The news caused a still deeper 
depression both in England and Ireland. In Dublin 
alone twenty thousand persons were thrown out of work, 
and the government had to raise money by increasing the 
national debt, but throughout all this time of distress, the 
pension list was not reduced by a halfpenny. With France 
and America allied against her, England was in extremity; 
her palmy days of power seemed over, and victory favored 
the insurgent cause. Thousands of Irishmen strengthened 
the armies of the enemy, and England, fearful of an alli- 
ance between Ireland and France, sought to conciliate the 
Catholics by a gradual repeal of the penal code. 

While England was dreading an alliance, Ireland was in 
terror of a French invasion, and also feared the attacks of 
the noted pirate, Paul Jones. French ships were seen off 
Belfast, and the mayor sent to Dublin for a force to defend 
the town. Sixty able-bodied troopers were all that could 
be spared to hold Belfast against the armies of France, for 
of fifteen thousand soldiers that Ireland was supporting, 
not one quarter were in the country. This being so, the 
island must fall a prey to the first enemy who became aware 
of her unprotected condition, or else she must undertake 
her own defence. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE VOLUNTEERS. 



The French are off Belfast, and 60 troopers nold the city! 
More men cannot be spared — the army is abroad fighting 
England's battle, and England cannot spare a man to save 
the sister island! What will the Ulstermen of Belfast 
do? Why, like their forefathers at Derry, rise and defend 
themselves. But this is no civil war, no strife of creeds 
and .races; it is a struggle of ail Irishmen, whether of Cel- 
tic, Norman, or English blood, to keep their country from 
a foreign foe. The grandson of the Derry 'prentice boy, 
and the grandson of the Jacobite of Limerick stand side 
by side in the great army of the Irish volunteers. 

In every town, in almost every village, sprang up a corps 



108 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

of volunteer defenders., clothed and equipped at their own 
expense. The French ships did not land in Belfast; but 
the danger was not over — for any day a fleet might sail in 
to any port of Ireland — and the volunteer army grew quick- 
ly in strength and discipline. Soon it became an ample 
defence for the country. The highest in the land were its 
officers. The duke of Leinster, the earl of Claremont, 
Henry Flood, and Henry Grattan were among its leaders, 
and few ivere the half-hearted Protestants who were not 
members of their local corps. Each regiment elected its 
own officers and chose its own color — blue, white, scarlet, 
orange, or more often the beloved green, and all the uni- 
forms were made by Irish tailors, of cloth woven in Irish 
looms, of wool sheared by Irish peasants from the backs of 
Irish sheep, and thus an impetus was given to Irish trade-. 

The Papists had little share in all this patriotism; the 
drillings and the marchings, the brilliant uniforms and the 
reviews were still a Protestant monopoly. The Catholics 
begged to be allowed to join the ranks, but, mainly owing 
to the prejudice of Flood and Claremont, were refused, and 
had at first to content themselves with helping on the cause 
with money. 

Still, they had powerful friends among the leaders. 
Hervey, earl of Bristol and Anglican bishop of Derry, and 
Henry Grattan were their staunch supporters, and at a later 
period many Catholics were enlisted. The government 
looked with no cordial eye on this growing army, which 
soon amounted to 100,000 armed men and over 200 cannon. 
Still, while discouraging the volunteers, the government 
was bound to sanction them, and give them a cold support, 
for nothing but the fame of these unpaid soldiers kept the 
French war-ships outside the Irish ports. Government 
was alive to the danger of such a corps — the wishes of a na- 
tion are more potent when supported by 100,000 men at 
arms — and the Irish felt that this truly was their hour and 
this the moment to demand free trade, so Grattan and 
11 ussy Burgh, brought forward a motion for colonial free 
trade in the Irish House of Commons, and, in obedience to 
the threats of the volunteers, Ireland was at length per- 
mitted to trade freely with the colon its. 



THE VOLUNTEERS. 109 

The next move was a bolder and an infinitely more impor- 
tant one. Grattan brought in a bill declaring that the king, 
the lords, and the commons are the only powers competent 
to enact the laws of Ireland. The bill was first brought 
forward in the session of 1780, which was already illustri- 
ous as having carried the free trade measure, but it was 
withdrawn till the next session, and in the interval the 
whole force of the volunteers was brought to bear upon the 
question, so that government was made clearly to under- 
stand that it was a national demand. In April, 1782, Grat- 
tan again brought in the bill, which passed without a divi- 
sion, and England, in repealing the statute of George I., 
resigned her claim for making laws for the Irish peojrie. 
Ireland was now, in some measure, a free country, but this 
boasted freedom left five-sixths of her people without polit- 
ical rights, and even the Protestant minority could hardly 
be said to elect its own representatives to a house of which 
considerably more than half the members were nominees 
of peers and government officials. The volunteers having 
so far succeeded in forcing legislation at the point of the 
bayonet, resolved by the same means to carry parliamentary 
reforms, and had it not been for the difficulties of the Cath- 
olic question, and the divisions of the Irish leaders, they 
could have gained their end. 

But Flood and Grattan were now in oj^en enmity, and 
differed on every subject. The final rupture had come di- 
rectly after the declaration of independence. The first act 
of the free parliament had been to break her own chains 
by repealing Poyning's Law, and then Grattan had moved 
an address of gratitude to England for sanctioning her lib- 
erty, and repealing the law of George I. The generosity 
of England did not appeal to Flood's less gentle nature. 
He argued that England had freed Ireland merely because 
she was too weak to hold her, and that should she ever re- 
cover her power she would once more reduce Ireland to the 
condition of a province. He therefore considered that the 
repeal of the law of George I. was an insufficient guarantee 
for Ireland's liberty, and that England must be made to de- 
clare that she would never again meddle in Irish affairs. 
Grattan held that such a course would be ungenerous in the 



110 IEISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

extreme; that England was not a foe, but a trusted friend in 
whom confidence could be placed, and who must not even 
be asked to make so humiliating a confession of past error 
and injustice. Grattan's view appealed to the chivalry of 
the house, and his address was carried with only two dis- 
sentient voices, but during the debate he and Flood had 
heaped on each other much abuse, and established an 
enmity, embittered on the part of Flood by jealousy of his 
rival and the humiliation of defeat. 

On every point these two great men differed. Flood was 
at once more radical and less liberal than the conserva- 
tive Grattan, who considered that the mission of the vol- 
unteers was now fulfilled, that the legislature of armed 
politicians was defensible only in extreme necessity, and 
that Ireland being now free to make her own laws, should 
legislate only in a constitutional manner. Flood was the 
upholder of the volunteers, and advised them to agitate 
for complete parliamentary reform, for he believed the in- 
terest of the borough owners would prevent it being effected 
except by intimidation or force. 

Charlemont, the president of the volunteers, was inclined 
to agree with Grattan, but held with Flood that Catholic 
emancipation must be resisted, as it would inevitably lead 
to the disestablishment of the Irish church. The bishop of 
Deny, whose influecne in the volunteers almost equalled 
that of Charlemont, agreed with Flood on the necessity of 
volunteer intervention to secure parliamentary reform, but 
held with Grattan that this must be accompanied by Cath- 
olic emancipation. Thus there were four parties among 
the patriots, and Grattan's popularity waned daily, while 
Flood was fast recovering lost ground. The volunteers re- 
solved that, as 1782 had been the year of independence, '83 
should be the reform year. A hundred and sixty delegates 
of the volunteers met in the Rotunda, on the 10th of No- 
vember, to draw up the resolutions for reform, and to de- 
cide whether the Catholics should or should not be in- 
cluded. Flood and Charlemont prevailed, and the former 
presented the bill to the commons in its mutilated form. 
A long and fierce debate ensued on the motion for leave 
to bring in the bill, but at length this was refused — not on 



grattan\s parliament. Ill 

the merits of the bill, but as an attempt to intimidate the 
house. With some who voted against the measure the al- 
leged was the real reason for casting out the bill, but the 
placeholders, borough owners, and pensioners grasped 
eagerly at so good an excuse for maintaining their power. 
Grattan, to his honor, voted for his rival's bill. 

All night the wordy battle raged, while the delegates, 
cold, depressed, and tired, sat in the Kotunda waiting the 
result of the debate. In the morning came the news of their 
defeat, and the warlike bishop exhorted them to an appeal 
to arms. But the power of the volunteers was already on 
the wane; by excluding the Catholics from the Reform Bill 
they had ruined their own cause, and in the gray light of 
the November morning the delegates, realizing that their 
hour was past, wisely followed Charlemont's prudent ad- 
vice and dispersed, never again to regain their old power 
and might. 

The defeat of the Reform Bill was followed by riots both 
in Dublin and the provinces, and though the volunteers 
were in no way responsible for the disorder, it detracted 
from the dignity of the organization. The moderate and 
anti-Catholic parties resigned and formed the Whig club, 
while the democratic party, taking up the cause of reform 
and Catholic emancipation formed for these ends, and 
these ends only, a perfectly open and loyal society, called 
''The United Irishmen." 



CHAPTER XXII. 

grattan's pakliament. 

The concession of free trade with the colonies, and the 
declaration of parliamentary independence, had an almost 
magical effect on the prosperity of the capital and the larger 
provincial towns. Once more the warehouses were filled, 
the looms at work, the harbors gay with ships, and the 
streets noisy with traffic. During the fifteen years that 
followed, many fine houses were built and decorated in 
Dublin, and the quays, the bridges, the law courts, and the 



112 IRISH EISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

custom house all date from this short time of Irish prosper- 
ity. 

But the well-being of the towns did not extend to the 
country, where feud and faction still raged between the 
peasantry of the two creeds. In the north, the "Orange- 
men," or "Protestant boys," turned thousands of their 
Catholic neighbors out of house and home, and these or- 
ganized for self-defence the society of "Defenders." In 
Minister, AYhiteboyism had revived, and the peasantry 
once more tried to obtain redress for their grievances by 
outrage and intimidation. The condition of the peasantry 
was most pitiable; the little plots of potato ground were let 
at a rental of £6 per acre; but this was not paid in coin, 
being worked out in labor at the rate of sixpence a day, so 
that for one acre of potato ground a man gave the work of 
'240 days. He had, therefore, only his one acre of ground 
and the toil of To working days for the support of himself 
and his family. Beyond this, he had to pay tithe to the 
Anglican clergyman and contribute to the support of 
his priest. 

The unhappy creatures, starving and desperate, ruined 
their cause by barbarous outrages, and to meet the needs 
of the case government brought in a stringent Coercion 
Bill. This was opposed by G-rattan, on the plea that the 
outrages were the result of mad despair, and would best be 
checked by a mitigation of the miseries of the people. Ac- 
cordingly, he brought in a measure for the consideration 
of the tithe question, but Fitzgibbon (lord Clare)* while 
admitting that the condition of the Munster peasantry was 
more wretched than human beings could be expected to en- 
dure, maintained that coercion must go before conciliation. 
The majority were of his opinion. The Coercion Act be- 
came law, and the Tithe Bill w T as thrown out. 

The new nation was only three years old when she had 
her first difficulty with England. Although colonial free 
trade had been granted, the commercial relations of Eng- 
land and Ireland still remained unaltered , but in 1 785 the 
Irish House passed a bill for removing some of the trade 
restrictions between the two countries. Such a bill was, 
of course, useless unless approved by both countries, and 



g rattan's parliament. 113 

was therefore sent to England, where a number of restraints 
on Irish colonial trade were suggested as the price of free 
trade with England. These not only deprived the measure 
of its usefulness, but were resisted by the Irish as an 
attempt upon their newly-acquired liberty, and accordingly 
the bill was thrown out. to the great annoyance of Pitt, 
who probably intended it as a step towards a union. 
Three years later another difficulty arose. The king's 
mind gave way, and it became necessary to appoint a 
regent. With regard to the person of the regent there was 
no dispute, both countries appointed the prince of Wales, 
but the question was, whether the regent should have 
limited or unlimited powers. Pitt and the English Tory 
majority voted for limited powers; Fox and the Whig 
minority for unlimited powers. Ireland, unfortunately, 
wont with the Whigs, and, anxious to prove her independ- 
ence, hastily offered the prince unlimited regal powers in 
Ireland. The Whig party was just then in the ascendant. 
Many of the Tory placemen deserted and swelled the 
majority. Suddenly there was an unexpected denouement. 
The king got well; the Whigs were out, and all placemen 
and officials who had voted with that party were turned 
out of office, and the pension list was augmented by 
£13,040 per annum for the reward of the faithful placemen. 
Seven commoners were ennobled for their good offices, and 
nine peers were raised a step in the peerage. 

The regency difficulty had resolved Pitt to carry a union, 
and to further this scheme he stooped to a course of bribery 
and corruption unparalleled in history. An eighth part of 
the revenue of Ireland was now divided among members 
of her parliament, and besides the nominees of the House 
of Lords, the English government held 110 commoners in 
her pay. Whatever the merits of the union, there can be 
no doubt as to the baseness of the means by which that 
important measure was carried. 

In 1792 both branches of the legal prof ession were opened 
to Catholics in Ireland, and in the following year a bill 
was passed granting them the right to vote at elections, 
but they were still prohibited from sitting in either house 
of parliament. In this year. too. the pension list, which 

8 



114 IEISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

then amounted to over £110,000 yearly, was revised, and 
it was enacted that in future no pension of more than 
£1,200 a year should be granted except to persons of royal 
blood. The concession of the elective franchise had 
raised the hopes of the Catholics, who thought that the 
right to sit in parliament could not be withheld from them 
much longer, and the national demand for Catholic emanci- 
pation and parliamentary reform grew stronger every day. 
Pitt, who had always supported a repressive policy and 
was the arch corrupter of the parliament, suddenly turned 
round and at th3 close of '94 announced himself a convert 
to the cause of conciliation and emancipation. The reason 
of this change of front we can never know; it may have 
been sincere or it may have been merely an attempt to 
induce Ireland to vote large sums of money toward the 
expenses of the French war, but its immediate result was 
that Fitzgibbon, lord Clare, was deposed from the vice- 
royalty, and lord Fitzwilliam, an ardent advocate of 
emancipation, sent to replace him, with power to act as he 
thought lit. The new lord lieutenant at once dismissed 
the ministers and replaced them by patriots, and emancipa- 
tion and reform were a foregone conclusion. The delighted 
nation, in an excess of prospective gratitude, voted 
£1,800,000 for the French war, and raised 20,000 men for 
the navy. Early in the February of '95, Grattan brought 
in a bill for Catholic emancipation, but the king now 
unexpectedly stepped in: his mind had taken four months 
to grasp the situation, but he now told Pitt that he would 
never consent to such a measure. Pitt was accordingly 
forced to make his choice between resignation and the 
reversal of his new policy. He decided to sacrifice his 
policy rather than his office; so Fitzwilliam was hastily 
recalled and all his appointments reversed. Clare was 
made lord chancellor, and lord Camden appointed viceroy. 
The rejection of the Emancipation Bill was now beyond 
doubt, the 110 members paid by the government and most 
of the 123 nominees of the House of Lords turned round, 
and Grattan's bill was supported only by a minority of 
48. 

That was the death-blow of the Irish parliament; the 



THE IN IT ED IRISHMEN. 115 

nation, cheated and angry, could not fail to grasp the 
situation. The independent parliament was but the tool 
of an English statesman; not one quarter of its members 
were chosen of the people, the remainder were a venal 
crew of placemen paid to pass measures dictated to them 
by the English government. Reform was hopeless, and 
independence but a name. Heart-sick and weary were 
the patriots, and many of them failed to attend the parlia- 
ment of '96. In '97, G rattan made one last hopeless 
effort to bring in a Reform Bill. The division was merely 
a farce; and, with a feeling that for the time at least 
further parliamentary effort was lost labor, most of the 
patriots resigned — Grattan, Cumin, and the milder spirits 
to watch from a distance the struggle of their country, 
Fitzgerald and O'Connor to attempt by an appeal to arms 
to right those wrongs which peaceful agitation proved 
powerless to redress. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE UNITED IRISHMEN. 

Nothing could be less sinister than the original aims 
and methods of the Society of United Irishmen, which 
was conceived in the idea of uniting Catholics and Protes- 
tants "in pursuit of the same object — a repeal of the penal 
laws, and a (parliamentary) reform including in itself an 
extension of the right of suffrage." This union was 
founded at Belfast, in 1791, by Theobald Wolfe Tone, a 
young barrister of English descent, and, like the majority 
of the United Irishmen, a Protestant. Some months later 
a Dublin branch was founded, the chairman being the 
Hon. Simon Butler, a Protestant gentleman of high char- 
acter, and the secretary a tradesman named James Napper 
Tandy. The society grew rapidly, and branches were 
formed throughout Ulster and Leinster. The religious 
strife of the Orange boys and Defenders was a great trouble 
to the United men, who felt that these creed animosities 



116 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

among Irishmen were more ruinous to the national cause 
than any corruption of parliament or coercion of govern- 
ment could possibly be. Ireland, united, would be quite 
capable of fighting her own battles, but these party fac- 
tions rendered her contemptible and weak. The society 
accordingly set itself the impossible task of drawing to- 
gether the Defenders and the Orangemen. Catholic eman- 
cipation — one of the great objects of the union — naturally 
appealed very differently to the rival parties: it was the 
great wish of the Defenders, the chief dread of the Orange- 
men. Both factions were composed of the poorest and 
most ignorant peasantry in Ireland, men whose political 
views did not soar above the idea that "something should 
be done for old Ireland." The United Irishmen devoted 
themselves to the regeneration of both parties, but the 
Orangemen would have none of them, and the Protestant 
United men found themselves drifting into partnership 
with the Catholic Defenders. To gain influence with this 
party, Tandy took the Defenders' oath. He was informed 
against; and, as to take an illegal oath was then a capital 
offence in Ireland, he had to fly for his life to America. 
This adventure made Tandy the hero of the Defenders, 
who now joined the union in great numbers; but the whole 
business brought the society into disrepute, and connected 
it with the Defenders, who, like the Orange boys, were 
merely a party of outrage. That a prominent United man 
had been a sworn member of the Defenders, and that many 
Defenders had joined the union was considered proof that 
it also was an organization for crime, and, accordingly, 
one night in the May of '94 a government raid was made 
upon the premises of the union. The officers of the society 
were arrested, their papers seized, the type of their news- 
paper destroyed, and the United Irish Society was pro- 
claimed as an illegal organization. Toward the close of 
this year all need for a reform society seemed to have 
passed. Fitzwilliam was made viceroy, and emancipation 
and reform seemed assured. His sudden rceall, the revers- 
al of his appointments, the rejection of Grattan's Reform 
Bill, and the renewal of the old coercive system convinced 
the United men of the powerlessness of peaceful agitation 



THE UNITED IRISHMEN. ll? 

to check the growth of the system of government by cor 
ruption. 

They accordingly reorganized the union, but as a secret 
society, and with the avowed aim of separating Ireland 
from the British empire. The Fitzwilliam affair had 
greatly strengthened the union, which was joined by many 
men of high birth and position, among them lord Edward 
Fitzgerald, brother of the duke of Leinster, and Arthur 
O'Connor, nephew to lord Longueville, both of whom had 
been members of the House of Commons. Fitzgerald had 
held a commission in the English army, and had served 
against the Americans in the war of Independence: his 
military knowledge caused him to be chosen military leader 
of the- United Irishmen, but the ablest man of the party 
was Thomas Addis Emmet, a barrister, and the elder 
brother of Robert Emmet. The society gradually swelled 
to the number of five thousand members, bat throughout 
its existence it was perfectly riddled with spies and inform- 
ers, by whom government was supplied- with a thorough 
knowledge of its doings. It became known to Pitt that 
the French government had sent an English clergyman, 
named Jackson, as an emissary to Ireland. Jackson was 
convicted of treason, and hanged, and Wolfe Tone was 
sufficiently implicated in his guilt as to find it prudent to 
fly to America. But before leaving Ireland he arranged 
with the directors of the union to go from America to 
France, and to try to persuade the French government to 
assist Ireland in a struggle for separation. 

While Tone was taking his circuitous route to Paris, 
government, to meet the military development of the so- 
ciety, placed Ulster and Leinster under a stringent Insur- 
rection Act; torture was employed to wring confession 
from suspected persons, and the Protestant militia and 
yeomanry were drafted at free quarters on the wretched 
Catholic peasantry. The barbarity of the soldiers lashed 
the people of the northern provinces into a state of fury: 
the torture did indeed extort some confessions, but for 
every man whose scalp was torn off by a pitch cap, or 
whose ribs were laid bare by flogging, there were a hundred 
recruits to the union, and these new recruits were animated. 



118 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

not by love of country., but by hatred of their persecutors 
and thirst for revenge. 

In the meantime the indomitable Tone — unknown, 
without credentials, without influence, and ignorant of the 
French language — had persuaded the French government 
to lend him a fleet, ten thousand men, and forty thousand 
stand of arms, which armament left Brest for Bantry Bav 
on the 16th December, 1796. 

Ireland was now in the same position as England had 
been when William of Orange bad appeared outside Tor- 
bay. Injustice, corruption, and oppression had in both 
cases goaded the people into rebellion. A calm sea and a 
fierce gale made the difference between the English patriot 
of 1688 and the Irish traitor of 1796. Had the sea been 
calm in the Christmas week of '96, nothing could have 
stopped the French from marching on to Dublin, but just 
as the ships put in to Bantry Bay, so wild a wind sprang 
up that they were driven out to sea, and blown and buffet- 
ted about. For a month they tossed about within sight 
of land, but the storm did not subside, and all chance of 
landing seeming as far off as ever, they put back into the 
French port. 

This was a fearful blow to the United Irshmen, but 
Tone was undaunted, and persuaded the Dutch Republic 
to give him an expedition. This expedition sailed in the 
following July, but fortune still favored England, and the 
second fleet met with a worse fate than the first. The 
government now had recourse to strong measures. The 
Insurrection Act had failed to pacify the country, for the 
people, instead of being cowed by the barbarities of the 
soldiers, were half mad with desperation, and to quiet 
them martial law was proclaimed in Ulster, where the 
army, consisting of half-trained Irish, Welsh, and Eng- 
lish yeomanry and militia, was in a scandalous state of in- 
subordination. Sir Ralph Abercrombie was now appoint- 
ed to the command. The gallant and humane old Scotch- 
man was aghast at the condition of the army, which, he 
said, "rendered it formidable to every one but the enemy," 
and he refused to sanction the use of torture, or to counte- 
nance the free quarter system. But finding himself power- 



"NINETY-EIGHT." 119 

less to control these abuses he threw up his command, in 
which he was succeeded by General Lake, to whom these 
practices were not repugnant. 

Meanwhile though spies and informers kept the govern- 
ment supplied with the details of every movement of the 
society, no arrests were made in Dublin till the March of 
'98. Nineteen of the leaders were then taken on one day, 
and their places in the society were filled by men of more 
extreme views, who, with Fitzgerald, preferred to risk an 
immediate rising to the more prudent policy of awaiting 
help from France, and it was resolved that Dublin and five 
counties should rise simultaneously on the 24th of May. 
On the 19th, Fitzgerald was arrested after a severe struggle, 
and two days later Byrne and the brothers Sheares, who 
were members of the new directory , were also taken and 
eventually hanged. On the 23d, martial law was pro- 
claimed in Dublin. 



CHAPTEE XXIV. 

* 'ninety-eight." 



Notwithstanding the imprisonment of Fitzgerald and 
the Sheares, five counties rose on the 24th of May, and 
twelve days later the Kildare and Wexford rebels held near- 
ly the whole of their respective counties, but the leaders 
were all in gaol, and their places filled by men destitute 
of military knowledge, with no united plan of action, no 
commissariat, and who were unable to follow up a victory, 
or to maintain discipline among their followers. Victory 
was followed by drunkenness, insubordination, and brutal 
acts of ferocity; and the army, well officered and well pro- 
visioned, soon overcame the disorganized mob. Then a 
very reign of terror set in. Matters were worst in Wexford, 
where there had been no branch of the United Irish Society, 
and where the struggle assumed the aspect of a war of 
creeds. But even there the abortive rising was utterly 
crushed in less than two months, while in Ulster the re- 
bellion was quelled in a week. 



120 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

This swift suppression was not effected without much 
bloodshed; there was no law but martial law, and in very 
many cases men were shot and hanged without even the 
scanty justice of a military trial. The streets of Wexford 
ran down in blood, and the bridge was a stage whereon 
many ghastly tragedies were enacted, the rebels first, and 
then the soldiers choosing it as the scene of their most 
horrible atrocities. 

Dublin, dispirited by the imprisonment of the leaders, 
had not risked a rising. The rebels of the capital were 
well aware that such an attempt, without the support of 
French help or military guidance, could only result in dis- 
graceful rioting and bloodshed ; moreover, they were over- 
awed by the crushing power of the government. Day and 
night the cries of the tortured resounding from the Riding 
House, in Marlborough Street, from the barracks, from 
the Royal Exchange, from the very entrance to the castle- 
yard, for floggings, which tore the flesh and laid the bones 
bare, were believed to be the only means of extorting con- 
fession. As a further warning to traitors, the scaffolding 
of the new Carlisle (now O'Connell) Bridge was decor- 
ated with the suspended bodies of suspected rebels. 

In June Edward Fitzgerald died in gaol, from the effects 
of the wounds he received in the struggle at his capture; 
but the Dublin gaols still held between eighty and ninety 
prisoners awaiting their trail for high treason. At this 
time Camden, the indolent viceroy, and Lake, the barbar- 
ous commander of the forces, were recalled, and lord Corn- 
wallis was sent out to fill both offices. 

Cornwallis accepted the viceroyalty with great reluctance; 
indeed he had only been induced to do so by the desire of 
having his name associated with the measure of legislative 
union which Pitt was resolved to carry, and which Corn- 
wallis believed essential to the maintenance of the British 
Empire. 

Fitzgibbon, lord Clare, retained the office of lord chan- 
cellor, and Robert Stewart, lord Castlereagh, was appointed 
chief secretary. 

Clare was a stern, fanatical supporter of coercion, and had 
the effrontery openly to defend the use of torture in the Eng- 



"ninety-eight." 121 

lish House of Peers. He was an ardent Unionist, and prob- 
ably one of the few whose opinion was based on conviction 
more than self-interest. 

Castlereagh was a man of a very different stamp; suave, 
corrupt, and wily, he proved his utter absence of moral 
sens"e by his boast that the government to which he belonged 
had taken measures to secure a premature explosion of the 
rebellion, and by his open and unblushing advocacy of a 
policy of bribery and corruption. He entered parliament 
as a patriot, but soon abandoned his party, and by his tal- 
ents and self-seeking rose to be marquis of Londonderry 
and prime minister of England. 

The viceroy was superior to either of his colleagues. 
Naturally humane and just, if he stooped to dishonorable 
actions he hated himself for the moral degradation. He 
would have nothing to do with torture, and saw the im- 
mense evils arising from martial law. His first act was to 
promise protection to all insurgents guilty of rebellion only 
who should surrender their arms, and soon afterward an 
Amnesty Bill was passed, but the leaders were excluded 
from its benefits. Both in Dublin and the provinces num- 
bers of the less prominent men had been hanged by order 
of martial law while the State trials of the leaders were 
proceeding. But while Byrne and Oliver Bond were con- 
victed and lay under sentence of death, the remaining 
eighty-four State prisoners volunteered to give general in- 
formation as to the designs of the society, on condition of 
being allowed to go into banishment, and of Byrne and 
Bond being spared. The negotiations with the govern- 
ment occupied some days, and while they were in j^rogress 
Byrne was hanged; still the negotiations were concluded. 
Emmet, O'Connor, M'Nevin, and Xeilson, were now ex- 
amined before a secret committee of the House of Lords, 
but as they gave only general information, and refused to 
implicate any of their associates, they disclosed nothing oi 
which the govornment was not already made aware through 
the information of spies. Either the government thought 
the conditions of the treaty had not been fully carried out 
by the four leaders, or believed that, notwithstanding their 
word, the rebels would seek the aid of hostile France, for 



122 IKISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

the State prisoners, and fourteen others, were sent to Fort 
George in Scotland, and kept in custody until the peace of 
1802. It had been believed that when the State prisoners 
volunteered information the rebellion was over, but Tone 
was still bus) 7 in France. He could not induce the French 
government to give him an efficient force, but on the 2 2d 
of August a small fleet entered Killala Bay, and marched 
triumphantly to Ballinamuck, in Longford. There they 
were overpowered by the troops under Cornwallis, and 
forced to surrender at discretion. Tone was good general 
enough to disapprove of these small expeditions, but was 
forced to accept what he could get, and in October another 
small French fleet sailed under command of General Hardi. 
The frigate Hoche, with Tone on board, arrived outside 
Loch Swilly, and for some hours gallantly defended herself 
against four English ships as large as herself, but at last 
she struck, and was brought into port. For a while Tone 
passed for a French officer, but he was recognized by an 
old friend, betrayed, and taken in irons to Dublin. Here 
he was convicted and sentenced to be hanged; but having 
resolved never to endure the ignominy of a public execution 
he cut his throat in gaol, and died after a week of agony. 
With him perished the last hope of the United Irishmen. 
All that now remained was to try the prisoners, and dur- 
ing the three months following Tone's death one hundred 
and thirty-four were sentenced to death, and ninety exe- 
cuted, but in the beginning of the year '99 civil law came 
in force, and the remain ing prisoners were handed over to 
its juster administration. The country now being quiet, 
the government took in hand the great measure of the Leg- 
islative Union. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

THE PROSPECT OF UNION. 



Although Ireland had obtained a nominal independence 
in 1782, her position since that time had been one that 
could not have contented any nation. A Catholic country 



THE PROSPECT OF UNION. 123 

ruled by a Protestant minority; an independent kingdom 
governed by alien officials, in whose selection she had no 
voice; a national parliament filled with nominees of those 
officials and of the House of Lords; an equal of England 
with no voice in the management of imperial affairs. A 
position so anomalous could be maintained in no country 
under heaven; a constitution so rotten and corrupt must 
inevitably be changed by reform or revolution or be entirely 
swept away. 

For long years the patriots had labored for reform, but 
wi bh the recall of Fitzwilliam that hope had died. The bold- 
er spirits had then tried the desperate remedy of revolution, 
and the crushing failure of the premature rising of '98 
sealed the doom of Irish independence. This was the 
moment for which Pitt had striven so long and so unswerv- 
ingly, for which he had corrupted and bought up both 
houses of the Irish legislature; but even now, .though the 
parliament was well nigh filled with placemen, though 
honest Irishmen of all parties were heartsick of the 
struggle, though resistance seemed hopeless, and any 
show of national feeling considered proof of sympathy with 
outrage and with crime, this poor, battered, weary island 
had to be bought by means of a system of unparalleled 
bribery. The project of union was fearfully unpopular 
in Ireland. Apart from the very natural dislike Irishmen 
felt to having their country reduced from a nation to a 
province, union was against the interest of almost every 
class. The- peers disliked it, because they were to be 
degraded from hereditary to representative legislators, only 
28 being elected by their body to represent the Irish peers 
jn the Imperial House; the borough-owners, because, as 
two-thirds of the Irish seats were to be annihilated, they 
would be deprived of the considerable income they had 
made by the sale of seats. To the professional men and 
traders of Dublin the project of removing the parliament 
to London meant little short of ruin. London, not 
Dublin, would thenceforward be the capital of Ireland; 
thither the Irish political world must repair, and, conse- 
quently, thither would be drawn all the rank and wealth 
and talent of the country. To the owners of houses and 



12-i IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

land in Dublin the prospect was no more cheerful; so the 
capital was unanimous in its hatred of the scheme. Still, 
from the English point of view, there were great and 
weighty arguments in favor of the measure. First and 
foremost there was the French scare; for had Napoleon 
taken his fleet to Ireland instead of Egypt the power of 
England had been annihilated. In after years Napoleon 
saw how fatal had been his error; but Pitt and the other 
English statesmen saw the danger at the time, and, know- 
ing the wide-spread disaffection in Ireland, they perceived, 
as Napoleon did not, that, invaded by an efficient French 
force, Ireland of '1)8 might have become a province of 
France, to the inevitable ruin of the British empire. 

This was the main reason for a union. The other argu- 
ments were comparatively trivial, and were mainly advanced 
to convince those who did not think the measure would 
lessen the chance of a French invasion. 

There was the suggestion that one country might wish 
to go to war and the other refuse to share the expense. 
The regency difficulty also was revived, and England 
suddenly became awake to Ireland's wrongs in having no 
voice in imperial legislation. Catholic emancipation, too, 
Pitt argued, could never be conceded while Ireland had a 
separate parliament; whereas, the introduction of a few 
Papist members into the imperial assembly could place 
the State in no peril, and, consequently, emancipation 
would probably be granted directly the union was passed. 

Then there was a class of argument whose validity could 
only be proved after the experiment had been tried. The 
union would cause an increase of Irish commerce; English 
capital would flow into Irish trade, English skill improve 
Irish agriculture. The two races, joined in a brotherly 
bond of union, could learn to love each other and outdo 
each other in a generous struggle to legislate for the benefit 
of the sister country. Kebellion and oppression would 
alike be past — the healing qualities of union would cause 
differences of race, creed, custom, interest, climate, and 
sentiment to be forgotten, and in a few years all that would 
remain to distinguish AVest from Great Britain would be 
the passage from Dunleary to Holyhead. 



THE PROSPECT OF UNION". 125 

The anti-unionists argued that union, so far from being 
a security against foreign invasion, would increase that 
danger; for the measure, thrust on an unwilling nation, 
would cause such disaffection and discontent as might 
bring about this very disaster, and even eventually prove 
fatal to the British connection, for Irishmen would in 
future regard rebellion, not as treason, but as a patriotic 
effort to regain an independence stolen from them without 
their consent. The anti-unionists considered that the war 
difficulty was practically non-existent. No such dispute 
had as yet arisen, and was not more to be dreaded than a 
disagreement between the House of Commons and the 
House of Peers; moreover, as the king had power to 
declare war without consent of parliament, he could over- 
rule any parliametary differences should they arise. 

As for the regency question, the anti-unioinsts point- 
ed out that there was at that moment a Eegency Bill 
under discussion which would settle that dispute for 
ever. 

Then they asked of what use would the promised 
emancipation be to the Catholics in an assembly in which 
they would be an utterly insignificant minority? Indeed, 
the whole question of parliamentary representation was 
just tlien a very sore subject in Ireland. The 100 Irish 
members might all vote for some local Irish bill and still 
find themselves in a minority of one to five, so that, practi- 
cally, Ireland would be, for home legislation, disfranchised; 
and England had never behaved with sufficient liberality 
to Ireland to be justified in entrusting her with the 
management of her affairs; moreover, England was unfitted 
by ignorance and dissimilarity of temper and situation to 
legislate successfully for the sister country. 

Then, too, they urged there would be great difficulty in 
finding suitable representatives for so distant a parliament; 
professional men could not leave their practice for five or 
six months of each year, and, in point of time, London 
was then nearly as far from Dublin as New York is now. 
Ruin must inevitably fall on the capital if the parliament 
were removed, and as numbers of men of position, having 
their interests removed to London, would become perma- 



126 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

nent absentees, the condition of the country must become 
more deplorable than ever. 

At least, urged the anti-unionists, let us wait a while; 
from delay no danger can arise; before we pass this irrevo- 
cable measure, let Ireland have time to recover the effects 
of the late rebellion, and let the sense of the country be 
arrived at by a general election, for, even if the measure 
be a good one, it will be unwise to press it against the 
public will, and to carry it by such odious means as whole- 
sale bribery and corruption. But if it be a bad one, the 
consequences will be dreadful. It required no general 
election to prove that the union was repugnant to the vast 
majority of Irishmen; both parties sought to test the sense 
of the country by means of petitions, and, for every signature 
obtained by the unionists, the oppositiosn party got a 
hundred; but in this matter the will of the Irish people 
was to count for nothing. Pitt was convinced of the 
necessity of union, and resolved to carry it at all hazards. 

The measure was first proposed in the viceregal speech 
at the opening of the parliament of 1799, but, after a very 
long and stormy debate, the paragraph hinting at union 
was rejected by a majority of five, and the subject dropped 
for that session. But the government did not accept 
their defect as final, and the autumn recess was devoted to 
a diligent canvas for votes. Cornwallis, believing union 
to be absolutely necessary for the maintenance of the 
British empire, stooped to a course of bribery which ren- 
dered his life unbearable to him. "How I long to kick 
those whom my public duties oblige me to court," he writes 
of the bought supporters of the union; and again, "I hate 
and despise myself hourly for engaging in such dirty work, 
and am supported only by the reflection that, without the 
union, the British empire must be dissolved." A hundred 
such passages from the viceroy's letters might be quoted, 
showing what he thought of the means by which the union 
was passed. But. degraded as Cornwallis felt himself by 
acting as the instrument of corruption, his hands were 
clean compared with those of Castlereagh. The chief secre- 
tary was without political conscience, and cared little for 
the purity of the means by which he gained his end. At 



THE PROSPECT OF UNION. 127 

his suggestion, the objections of the borough owners were 
removed by the exorbitant ''compensation" of £15,000 
for each seat. In this way a million and a-quarter of 
money was expended and charged into the Irish national 
debt, and the discontent of members who had paid for their 
seats was annulled by the promise that the money so ex- 
pended should be returned to them. 

Those who were above the reach of direct bribery were 
seduced by promises of titles and honors, and after the 
passing of the union, 22 Irish peers were created; five re- 
ceived English peerages, and 20 w r ere raised a step in the 
peerage; places, pensions, judgeships, posts of profit and of 
honor, were showered so lavishly that there were not a 
dozen unbribed supporters of the union. Nor were the 
anti-unionists free from the charge of corruption; both 
parties seem to' have used equally unscrupulous means to 
get signatures for their petitions, and tried to outbid each 
oher for such seats in the House of Commons as came into 
the market. 

Grattan ' had for long been seriously ill, and when, on 
the 13th of January, parliament assembled, he was still too 
weak to leave his bed. But the patriots felt that the 
father of Irish independence would be her best champion, 
and by an expenditure of £5,000 they secured the seat for 
Wicklow, which happened to become vacant. The writ was 
issued on the 15th of January, and by great exertion, and 
an over-straining of the law, the election was held on the 
same day, and by midnight Grattan was returned. That 
night was passed in the Commons in hot union debate, and 
the thickest of the fight was over when, at seven in the 
morning, Grattan entered the house. Tale as death, and 
as thin, worn by sickness to a very shadow of himself, the 
father of the Irish parliament tottered into the house 
supported by two friends. Instinctively the whole assem- 
bly rose, and after the oath had been administered there 
was a silence. Grattan rose feebly from his seat, but find- 
ing himself unable to stand, asked leave to address the 
house sitting. As he spoke his weakness disappeared; for 
two hours his eloquence held the house, but it was power- 
less to move men whose minds were already made up, and 



128 IRISH HISTOEY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

when, after a debate of eighteen hours, the house divided, 
the unionists obtained a majority of forty-two. It was now 
a mere question of time, but through every stage the bill 
was debated on both sides with magnificent eloquence; on 
June 7th the final passage of the bill was effected in Ire- 
land, and on the 2d of August, 1800, the Act of Union re- 
ceived the royal assent. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

THE ACT OF UNION". 

The acquiescence of the Catholics to the measure of 
union had been gained by promises of emancipation, and 
the assurances that on this subject the ministers were 
unanimous; but the more powerful adherence of the Protes- 
tants was bought with something more substantial than 
words, and the passing of the union added an enormous 
sum to the national debt of Ireland. 

The borough owners received £15,000 compensation for 
each borough, and this alone cost £1,275,000, of which lord 
Shannon and the marquess of Ely received each £45,000, 
and lord Clanmorres £23,000 and a peerage. The price 
of a union vote was £8,000 down, or in instances where 
ready money would not be accepted, an honorable or profit- 
able office. Indeed, the list of the supporters of the union 
shows us that, of the 140 members who voted for the meas- 
ure, only 11 were neither place-holders nor received rewards 
for their votes, and of these 11, one was General Lake, the 
commander of the forces through the rebellion of '98. The 
rebellion and the union had cost Ireland dear, for her na- 
tional debt, which in '97 had amounted only to £4,000,000, 
had during four years increased more than seven fold, and 
at the beginning of 180? stood at £28,545,134, or nearly 
one-sixteenth that of England, which then amounted to 
£450,504,984. Ireland sought to protect herself from the 
charges of the English pre-union debt by the seventh article 
of the union, which prescribes that the sinking fund for 
the reduction of the principal of the debt incurred in either 



Tin: ACT OF UNION. 129 

kingdom shall be defrayed by separate taxation; but this 
article has not been complied with, and the two kingdoms 
now bear conjointly the charges of the pre-nnion expenses. 
It was arranged that for the ensuing 20 years the expendi- 
ture of the United Kingdom should be defrayed in the pro- 
portions of fifteen parts to Great Britain to two of Ireland, 
and that after that time a fresh arrangement should be 
made, and the proportions from time to time revised until 
such time as the national debt of Ireland should bear the 
proportions of two to fifteen parts of the debt of Great 
Britain. This consummation was arrived at in 1817, for 
whereas during the 16 years of union the British debt had 
not doubled, the Irish had increased fourfold, and already 
exceeded the proportion of two to fifteen. Nor was this all 
that Ireland had to complain of, for in defiance of the 
seventh article of the union, which provided that the sur- 
plus revenue should be expended for the benefit of each 
country in the proportion of their contributions, the surplus 
due to Ireland, and amounting in some years to three or four 
millions, was not so expended. 

The sixth article places the two kingdoms on equal com- 
mercial footing, and prescribes that neither shall impose a 
duty on the imports or exports of the other; but this com- 
mercial equality was no benefit to Ireland; the English in- 
dustries were in possession of the market, the commercial 
current flowed in her direction, and want of capital and 
the complicated system of rings, exclusive and reciprocal 
trading, placed insuperable barriers in the way of Irish 
commerce. That the union did not improve Irish trade is 
easily seen by a glance at the returns of her imports and 
exports, which, though they increased with her increasing 
population, rose much less rapidly than they had done in 
the years before the union, and became of a less satisfactory 
character — for the imports consisted yearly more of manu- 
factured goods, the exports of raw material. 

The other important articles of the union were the fourth, 
regulating the parliamentary representation of Ireland, and 
the fifth, providing for the eternal duration of the Estab- 
lished Church. 

By the fourth article it was provided that four lords 



130 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

spiritual of Ireland, by rotation of sessions, and twenty- 
eight lords temporal, elected for life by the peers of Ire- 
land, shall sit and vote in the House of Lords; that the 
non-representative peers shall be eligible to sit for any con- 
stituency of the United Kingdom in the House of Com- 
mons; and that not more than one Irish peerage shall be 
created for every three that become extinct. This article 
also fixes the representation of Ireland in the House of 
Commons at one hundred members, at which figure it has 
practically remained throughout the eighty-five years of 
union, though the principles of proportional representation 
would have allowed Ireland over two hundred representa- 
tives in 1845, and now entitle her to not more than ninety- 
one. The fifth article enjoins ''that the churches of Eng* 
land and Ireland, as by law established, be united into one 
Protestant Episcopal Church, to be called The U7iited 
Church of England and Ireland, and that the doctrine, 
worship, discipline, and government of the United Church 
shall remain in full force for ever, as the same are now by 
law established for the Church of England, and that the 
continuance and preservation of the United Church as the 
Established Church of England and Ireland shall be 
deemed, and taken to be an essential and fundamental 
part of the union." This clause formed the great, and, 
indeed, the sole argument in favor of retaining the Estab- 
lishment in Ireland. 

The remaining articles provide for the succession of the 
sovereign and the maintenance of the laws. On New- 
Year's-day, 1801, the union practically commenced, and 
at the assembling of the first united parliament on January 
22d the Catholics looked for speedy measures of relief. 
But the Catholic claims were not so much as mentioned in 
the king's speech, and his majesty having declared that he 
would abdicate rather than consent to Catholic emancipa- 
tion, Pitt resigned into the hands of the anti-Catholic Ab- 
ingdon. The hopes of the Catholics were dashed; five of the 
ministers reported to be in favor of the measure proved to be 
against it, and Pitt, though he professedly resigned on this 
question, resigned into the hands of a man whom he knew 
to be against emancipation, and resigned at a moment when 



THE ACT OF UNIOtf. 131 

the failure of his continental policy rendered his position 
as prime minister a painful one. He was probably glad to 
leave to others the task of making and breaking the Treaty 
of Amiens, and at least his resignation cannot be put down 
to devotion to the Catholics, for, when he resumed office in 
1804, he gave a pledge to the king never again to trouble 
him with the subject. 

In 1801 things were going ill with England; the allied 
armies had been victorious everywhere, and the French 
scare, which had led to the union, induced the ministers 
to pass, as the first measure of the united parliament for 
Ireland, an act for the suspension of the habeas corpus, 
and empowering the viceroy to proclaim martial law. Yet 
there was at that time no rebellion in Ireland; bad trade, 
bad harvest, and the abandonment of the Catholic claims 
rendered the union even more unpopular in reality than it 
had been in anticipation; there was some little agitation for 
repeal, but there was no shadow of rebellion. 

When the claims of the Catholics were thrown over, 
Cornwallis gladly resigned the viceroyalty, and betook him- 
self to the more congenial task of negotiating the Peace of 
Amiens. At its conclusion in June, 1802, the State 
prisoners were released from Fort George, and a new 
council of United Irishmen was established in Brussels. 
Unable themselves to return to Ireland, the United Irish- 
men sent over as an emissary young Robert Emmet, who 
was then in his three-and-twentieth year. The young man 
arrived in Dublin in the October of 1802, and spent the 
winter in organizing and preparing for rebellion. The 
moment was almost as unfavorable as any that could have 
been chosen; the memory of '98 was still green, and Eng- 
land on the alert; the best of the Separatists were all out 
of the country, and the revolutionary party were without 
funds. But for these errors of judgment, not Emmet, but 
those who sent him are to blame, and if we concede that 
any man has the right to involve his country in the terrible 
misery and risks of rebellion and civil war, we must admit 
that the nobility of Emmet's character, and the purity of 
his aims, entitle him to the hero-worship that Ireland has 
so lavishlv showered on his memorv. 



132 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

His rebellion was worse than a failure, it was a collapse; 
but his plan of securing the capital and holding it as a 
rebel fortress is the only one which could have even the 
remotest chance of success in a country whose center is one 
vast plain. But after eight months' diligent organization 
Emmet was followed into the streets by an army of only 
eighty persons, and his attempt ended in nothing nobler 
than the brutal murder of lord Kil warden, one of the best 
judges that ever sat upon the Irish bench, and his nephew, 
a clergyman. An hour later the streets of Dublin had re- 
turned to their usual quiet, and Emmet, heart-sick, disil- 
lusionized, and convinced of the utter hopelessness of the 
struggle, hurried to the Wieklow hills to prevent a country 
rising. He might even yet have escaped, but he had' re- 
solved to see one person before leaving the country. He 
could not go without a word to Sarah Curran, the youngest 
daughter of the advocate, who, at all risks to his life and 
professional reputation, had undertaken the defence of the 
rebels of '98. But the meeting between Miss Curran and 
Emmet never took place; while he was still waiting, he was 
seized and taken to Dublin. 

The story of the clandestine engagement then came to 
Ourran's ears, and he, unable to forgive the secrecy and 
the injury that this connection was to his reputation as a 
loyal man, refused to defend his daughter's lover. Emmet 
lost nothing by this refusal; the result of the trial was a 
foregone conclusion; hundreds of blunderbusses and thou 
sands of pikes had been discovered in Emmet's arsenal, 
and with them were some thousand printed placards to be 
issued by the republican government to the people of Ire 
land. The evidence against Emmet was complete, and if 
anything could have saved him, his youth, the manly gentle - 
ness of his countenance, and his own marvellous eloquence, 
would have been his best advocates. On the nineteenth of 
September he was led in irons to the dock; by midnight 
the verdict was obtained, and in the afternoon of the next 
day he was hanged in Thomas Street, within view of his 
arsenal. "All that I crave of the w r orld," said dying Em- 
met, "is the charity of its silence; let no man write my 
epitaph," but by friend and foe alike that request has been 



THE PEACE OF 1815. 133 

denied, and the nameless stone in St. Michan's churchyard 
alone is faithful to the wish of the dead rebel. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE PEACE OF 1815. 



The utter collapse of a rebellion organized by a leader 
of such exceptional enthusiasm and personal charm was 
proof that in 1803 there was wonderful little tendency to 
rebellion in Ireland, but the renewal of the continental 
war increased the dread of a French invasion, and the mis- 
erable rising of eighty persons was punished by the impris- 
onment of three hundred, and the death of nineteen. 
Martial law was proclaimed, the Hal^eas Corpus Act sus- 
pended, and the whole yeomanry of Ireland put on per- 
manent duty, at a cost of one hundred thousand pounds 
monthly. 

The rising, abortive as it had been, threw back the anti- 
union party; in the horror and terror of the time Home 
Rule and Separation were deemed equally disloyal, and 
any demand for repeal raised a cry of disintegration of the 
empire. "Do not unite with us, sir," said Samuel John* 
son to an Irish friend; "we would unite with you only to 
rob you;" and in the early years of the century there was 
a very general impression in Ireland that the union had 
indeed been, as Byron called it, "The union of the shark 
with its prey." The continental war gave artificial stim- 
ulus to agriculture both in England and Ireland, but by 
the end of 1804 the Irish national debt had risen to fifty 
three millions — a rise of twenty-six millions in four years, 
while in the same time the net produce of the revenue had 
actually decreased, despite the increasing population. The 
prosperity of the towns began to flag at once. Theremov* 
al of the parliament ruined Dublin, which, from a metrop- 
olis, sank in a few years to the condition of a second-rate 
provincial city. 

The common dislike to the union drew all parties to- 
gether; Protestant, Catholic, Whig, and Tory united in 



134 IEISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

the wish for repeal, but while the French scare continued 
agitation seemed hopeless, and the Catholics set themselves 
to gain first the lesser, but more attainable, boon of eman- 
cipation. The}' could not tell that the tendency of the 
century would be towards religious equality and centraliza- 
tion of government; that emancipation must come, even 
without any effort on the part of the Catholics, while every 
year would render English statesmen more attached to 
the union, and would raise fresh difficulties in the way of 
repeal. 

In 1804 Pitt resumed office, and the Catholics, ignorant 
of his pledge to the king, asked him to present their peti- 
tion for emancipation. lie was, of course, unable to do 
this, and on March 25th of the following year the petition 
was presented by Fox in the Commons and Grenville in 
the Lords. During the debate that ensued, it was proposed 
to place the Roman Church on the same footing as the 
Galilean, by allowing the sovereign a right of veto on the 
prelates appointed by the Pope, and thus arose the famous 
question of veto, which was destined to be so bitterly de- 
bated before the emancipation question was settled. It 
was during this debate that Grattan made his first speech 
in the united parliament, and to this cause he devoted the 
remainder of his life. The bill was thrown out by a ma- 
jority of nearly three to one, and when, after the death of 
Pitt in the following January, the Grenville-Fox ministry 
was formed, Fox advised the Catholics to let their claims 
stand over till the next session. So far as Fox was con- 
cerned, that next session was never held, for on the 13th 
of September he died. At his accession to office the hopes 
of the Catholics uad anti-unionists had been high; the act 
for the suspension of the habeas corpus was allowed to ex- 
pire, and for a time Ireland was governed by ordinary leg- 
islation. The death of the minister dashed these high 
hopes; and in the next session it was not even proposed to 
bring forward an Emancipation Bill, though, as a soothing 
measure, an act to enable Catholics to hold commissions in 
the army and navy was introduced; but so invincible was 
the king's opposition to this concession that the ministers 
were forced to resign, and the "No Popery" cabinet was 



THE PEACE OF 1815. 135 

formed. The duke of Bedford was now recalled, and the 
duke of Richmond succeeded him as viceroy, with Sir Ar- 
thur Wellesley, afterward duke of Wellington, as chief 
secretary. In this year, for the first time since the union, 
there was a renewal of Whiteboyism, the objects of the 
Whiteboys being the usual ones of reduction of rents, se- 
curity of tenure, increase of laborers' wages, and resistance 
to tithe. The organization was confined to a small part of 
the country, and was quickly suppressed by ordinary law, 
but so great was the dread of a French party that the whole 
country was placed under an Insurrection Act and an Arms 
Act. 

Notwithstanding the known views of the cabinet, the 
Catholics continued to urge their claims, and in 1808 Grat- 
tan presented a petition for emancipation accompanied by 
veto. The measure was thrown out, to the content of most 
parties, for the Catholic prelates unanimously declared that 
they preferred the existing state of affairs to emancipation 
with veto. Two years later the measure was again brought 
foward, and, as a set-off to the veto, the state payment of 
the Catholic clergy was proposed, but despite the tempta- 
tion that this must have offered to so poor a body of men, 
the clergy declared against the measure, and the body of the 
Irish Catholic laity went with them. The English Cath- 
olics, some few of the Irish Catholic nobility and upper 
class, and the Irish Protestant advocates of emancipation 
favored the scheme, but the vast majority were against it. 
In this year Daniel O'Connell was elected chairman of the 
Catholic committee, and from this time he became the ac- 
knowledged leader of the Catholics. O'Connell was now 
thirty-five years of age, and had already attained consider- 
able reputation at the Irish bar. He had joined the Cath- 
olic committee in 1806, and at an earlier date had made 
speeches in favor of repeal. In 1810 a Repeal Asssociation 
was formed, and had O'Connell thrown his energies into 
that channel it might possibly have fallen to the lot of the 
Irish, not the united, parliament to emancipate the Cath- 
olics. But O'Connell believed that in the House of Com- 
mons the Irish Catholics would best plead the cause of re- 
peal; and, being himself a Catholic, he felt the political deg- 



136 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

redation of the mass of his countrymen very keenly. The 
veto agitation broke up the Catholics into two parties, and 
the movement seemed doomed to collapse till 1823, when 
O'Connell, taking advantage of some revival of interest, 
founded the Catholic Association. 

The history of Ireland in the years between 1810 and 
1823 is mainly agrarian; the Catholic agitation was con- 
tinued, and various Emancipation Bills were brought in 
and rejected — Grattan making his last effort in 1813, six 
years before his death; but until 1823 the cry for emanci- 
pation did not amount to a national demand. 

After holding the chief secretaryship for a few months 
only, Arthur Wellesley resigned it to his brother, Sir Wel- 
lesley Pole, who was succeeded by Sir Robert Peel on the 
formation of the Liverpool-Castlereagh ministry in 1812. 
Peel's Irish politics are briefly summed up in his nick- 
name, "Orange Peel;" he was intensely unpopular, being 
too temporizing for his own party and too exacting for the 
emancipationists. During his tenure of office the long con- 
tinental war came to an end, and with the peace came a 
rapid fall in the price of agricultural produce. In Eng- 
land there were two interests — what the land interest lost 
the trade interest gained by the cheap prices; but in Ire- 
land, where there was no trade, the fall in prices was an un- 
mixed evil. To bolster up the agricultural interest in both 
countries, Corn Laws were passed prohibiting the importa- 
tion of wheat till home-grown grain should have reached 
the price of 80s per quarter. This act remained in force till 
1828, when "the sliding scale" was introduced, allowing 
the importation of wheat on payment of a sliding scale of 
duty, which varied from £1 5s. 8d. per quarter when the 
average English price was under 62s., to Is. per quarter 
when home-grown grain was above 73s. But notwithstand- 
ing this protective duty the peace brought great distress to 
Ireland, and distress was followed by agrarian outrage. 
An Insurrection Act was immediately passed and martial 
law proclaimed, but this measure had no effect on the starv- 
ing peasantry, and the southern provinces remained prac- 
tically in revolt against the landlords and tithe proctors. 
The reduction of prices had been followed by no reduction 



THE PEACE OF 1815. 137 

of rent, and in 1819 the failure of the potatoe crop changed 
pinching distress to absolute famine. The Coercion Act 
was renewed, but was ineffectual, and the operation of an 
act which had been passed two years earlier lessening the 
cost of evictions had no better result. 

In 1822 the potato crop again failed, and to a more dis- 
astrous extent. There was grain in abundance, but the 
peasantry could not afford to buy it. Thousands of quarters 
of grain were exported weekly to England; while so great 
was the scarcity in Connomara that half-starved wretches 
walked fifty miles into Galway in the wild hope of food, 
but when they arrived in the city they were often so ex- 
hausted that they fainted, and the means taken to restore 
them failed in effect. In the month of June there were 
99,639 souls in the County Clare alone living on daily 
charity, and in Cork there were 122,000; while in some of 
the remoter villages the whole population died of sheer 
starvation. Through all this distress the middleman or 
landlord and the tithe proctor had to be paid, and to the 
unreasonableness of their claims and their severity in ex- 
torting them, those living on the spot, and best competent 
to judge, attributed the agrarian outrages. Writing in 
this very year of 1822, Mr. Wiggins, agent to the marqness 
of Hertford, says in his "Hints to Landlords" that, "goaded 
by the distreses of laws; irritated also by rents too high 
even for war prices, by the fallen prices of produce without 
corresponding reduction of rents and tithes, and by sever- 
ities which have increased with the difficulties of their col- 
lection, the peasantry of Munster yielded to the influence 
of these, and probably of other less apparent causes, and 
in the winter of 1822 insurrection and outrage became so 
extended as to require a large army to check its progress; 
but," he adds, "it is not by the terrors of the bayonet or 
the law that a brave and hardy people like the Irish can or 
ought to be permanently controlled; it is not only entirely 
in your power, but also greatly to your interests, nay, your 
bounden duty as lords of the soil, to alleviate these miseries, 
and to remove this poverty." 



138 HUSH HIST0KY FOB ENGLISH REAPERS. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

EMANCIPATION. 

The year lS:lo marks an era in the history of Catholic 
emancipation, for in it O'Connell, aided by Shiel, formed 
the Catholic Association for the furtherance of the cause 
of emancipation by means of petitions, public discussions, 
meetings, and the return of members of parliament, who 
were pledged to support the cause. The association, like 
its numerous successors, consisted of members paying an 
annual subscription of £1 Is., and associates who paid one 
shilling. A standing committee formed the government; 
meetings were held weekly, and the business consisted of 
organization, discussion, correspondence, and petitions. 
At first it was difficult to keep the infant association alive, 
and at one of the early meetings O'Connell had to entreat 
two Maynooth students, who were passing the committee 
rooms, to come in and form a quorum. It was a fortunate 
accident; from that hour the clergy gave the association 
their support. The association, once rooted, spread like a 
lire, and in the next year the "Catholic rent," consisting 
of one penny monthly, averaged £500 a week, representing 
nearly half a million associates. The cry for emancipation 
had become a national demand, and there was a strong 
feeling in England that it ought not to be resisted, though 
George IV. regarded the project almost as unfavorably as 
his father had done. In March, 1825, the association was 
dissolved by act of parliament, but O'Connell, who boasted 
that he "could drive a coach and six through any act of 
parliament," circumvented the act, and reorganized the 
association under the name of the New Catholic Associa- 
tion, and the government took no further means to suppress 
the society, for at that moment they were constructing a 
Catholic Relief Bill granting emancipation, but weighting 



EMANCIPATIONS 139 

the measure by the disfranchisement of the forty-shilling 
freeholders, and the State payment of the Catholic clergy. 
In this form the bill was unpopular in Ireland, and the 
news that it had been thrown out by the lords was received 
with pleasure rather than disappointment. The proposal 
for the State payment of the clergy was held both by priest- 
hood and laity to be nothing better than a bribe, and the 
forty-shilling freeholders, who were the great bulk of the 
rural voters, hotly resented the prospect of disfranchise- 
ment. During the next three years the vigorous and ever- 
increasing efforts of the Catholics were unavailing; in 1827 
Canning died, and early in the ensuing year the duke of 
Wellington became premier, and Peel home secretary. 
Yet this anti-Catholic administration was destined to carry 
the Catholic Eelief Bill, not from any conversion to the 
principles of religious equality, but. as the premier himself 
stated, "to prevent civil war." While the Emancipation 
Bill was being framed, Mr. Vesey Fitzgerald, member for 
Clare, accepted the office of president of the board of trade, 
and had to present himself for re-election. To the surprise 
of every one O'Connell announced his intention of contest- 
ing the seat, for though the nature of the oath of alleg- 
iance was such that no Catholic could swear it, there was 
no law to prevent the election of a Papist. The contest 
was a hot one, and O'Connell was successful, but as the 
Emancipation Bill was in progress he did not attempt to 
take his seat till it had been through the house. In the 
next session it passed, but at the same time the county 
franchise in Ireland was raised from forty shillings to ten 
pounds — five times that of England, where the franchise 
remained unchanged. As the disfranchisement of the 
forty-shilling freeholders was for many years a standing 
grievance, it will be well to briefly state the facts of the 
case. 

In 1795 a bill had been passed giving the elective fran- 
chise to all lease holders of property to the annual value of 
40s. This bill had made Irish landlords very willing to 
grant small leases, and a whole race of peasant farmers had 
sprung up. The population had increased rapidly, and in 
1821 amounted to nearly 7,000,000, At the fall "in prices 



140 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

at the peace of 1815, the cry of over-population of Ireland 
had first been raised, and the famine of '17 and '22 had 
confirmed English statesmen in their theory; and it was 
professedly as a check to the too rapid increase of popula- 
tion that the franchise was raised from two to ten pounds. 
But, whether for good or evil, the deed was done; the 
population was there, and the disfranchisement brought an 
infinity of misery. Such landlords as cared for political 
power, and looked on their tenants only as voters, refused 
to renew small leases, and at their expiration ejected the 
small tenants to bring the value of the leaseholds of such 
as remained up to the county qualification. The cheap 
Ejectment Acts that had been passed after the peace of 
1815 greatly simplified the process of eviction, and in Ire- 
land a tenant could be evicted in two months and at a cost 
of £2, while in England the process took at least 12 months 
and cost £18. The Irish landlord, too, could distrain the 
young crops of the tenant, keep them till they were ripe, 
gather and sell them, charging the tenant with the ac- 
cumulation of the expense. 

After the disfranchisement these acts were largely used, 
and many landlords who did not evict refused to renew 
small leases, and so the system of annual tenancy increased. 
It is difficult to conceive what can be said in favor of this 
system of tenure so ruinous to the cultivator and the soil. 
The tenant, dreading eviction, fearing that his rent may 
be raised on the value of the improvements he has made, 
and unwilling to risk his capital, stints his manure and 
contents himself with scratching over the surface of the 
soil, growing potatoes and oats, oats and potatoes, till the 
impoverished land refuses to yield enough to support life, 
much less pay the rent; then follows the familiar, miserable 
story of eviction, starvation, and crime. 

By the raising of the franchise, the electors of Ireland 
were reduced from 200,000 to 2G,000, that is to say, nearly 
seven out of every eight electors were disqualified. 
Twenty-one years later a Reform Act was passed establish- 
ing a £5 freehold and £12 rating occupation franchise for 
the counties, and an £8 rating occupation franchise for 
the boroughs, and in 1808 the borough franchise was 



EMANCIPATION. 141 

lowered to £1 and a lodger £10 franchise introduced; but 
the Fenian movement being then at its height, it was not 
deemed expedient to lower the county franchise in Ireland. 
In this same year a Lowered franchise added 400,000 voters 
to the English county constituencies, and household suffrage 
was granted to the Scotch and English boroughs. This act 
was superseded in 1885 by a Eeform Bill, which practically 
granted household suffrage to both Great Britain and Ire- 
land. 

The parliament which disfranchised the 40s. freeholders 
and granted Catholic emancipation, was dissolved in 1830 
by the death of George IV., and at the ensuing election 
O'Connell and many other Roman Catholics were returned. 
From this time "the Liberator" devoted himself to the 
cause of repeal; this had been his first political aspiration, 
and now 'he returned to the old path. But the old allies 
were gone; the Protestant repealers were no more; religious 
bigotry had conquered self-interest and national sentiment: 
dread of O'Connell and the Pope had converted the Irish 
Protestants into unionists. They could not realize that 
the days of religious disability were passed for Papist and 
Protestant, that a renewed Irish parliament could never 
pay off old scores, no matter how great a majority of its 
members might be Catholics. They dreaded papal supre- 
macy even more than they hated English ascendancy, and 
they preferred the ill they knew to the ill they knew not. 
Moreover, repeal had become a much more complicated 
question; laws had been made, taxes levied, debts con- 
tracted that placed practical difficulties in the way of 
simple repeal; it was impossible after a lapse of 30 years 
to go back to the old order of things, and O'Connell had 
no project of an Irish parliament for Irish affairs, and an 
Imperial parliament for the settlement of the affairs of the 
empire. Home Rule, too, was easily confounded with 
Separation, or was mistrusted as a step towards the sever- 
ance of the connection of the two countries. 

Throughout the reign of William IV. the Irish masses 
remained indifferent to the repeal question; emancipation 
had brought them nothing but disfranchisement, and they 
were mainly occupied with the struggle for existence, 



142 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

with the emigration question, and above all with the tithe 
war. In vain the rector claimed every tenth sheep; in 
vain an army as large as that which dragooned India tried 
to collect the tithe. A purely spontaneous resistance had 
arisen among the peasantry who, of their own accord, and 
without leaders or agitators, carried on war by means of 
outrage and what is now known as "boycotting." It was 
useless to try to sell the cattle that had been seized for 
tithe, for though thousands of persons attended the auctions 
not one bid would be made for cattle seized under the 
tithe decree. The state of the country was fearful. War, 
prosecuted on both sides with barbarous cruelty, raged 
between the peasantry and the tithe proctors, and a 
stringent Coercion Act did nothing for the pacification of 
the country. 

In the meantime Mr. Stanley, afterward lord Derby, 
who was then chief secretary, brought in a bill for primary 
education in Ireland. ]\ T o religious instruction was to be 
given in the schools founded under this act; yet, notwith- 
standing the national objection to mixed education and 
the denunciations of priests and parsons, the schools 
prospered. Twenty years later Ireland contained 5,000 
national schools, attended by 511,020 pupils, and in 1880 
there were 7,590 schools with 1,083,020 pupils. Another 
much needed reform was accomplished in this reign by 
the passing of the Church Temporalities Act, whereby ten 
bishoprics were abolished and the Establishment was made 
to bear some proportion to the people for whose benefit it 
was maintained at the cost of so much bloodshed and 
injustice. The reign was but a short one; for in June 
1837 the king died, and was succeeded by his niece, 
Victoria. 

It was impossible that so young* a woman as the new 
queen could have more than a nominal voice in the govern- 
ment of a vast empire, and thus with the reign of Victoria 
began the era of constitutional government in England. 
One of the first acts of the queen's ministers was to pass 
the much-debated measure of poor law for Ireland, and 
soon afterward the Tithe Commutation Act abolished for 
ever the scandalous method of collecting tithe. No more 



EMANCIPATION. 143 

were corn and cattle to be seized by force of arms, for in 
the future the landlord — not the tenant — was to pay a 
sum of money as tithe. By raising the rents the landlords 
generally transferred the obligation to the tenant, and by 
consenting thus to play the part of tithe collector, they 
attracted toward themselves all the ill-will that had been 
hitherto bestowed on the tithe proctor. 

This same year (1838) made memorable by the Poor Law 
and Tithe Reform Acts, also witnessed the establishment 
of two great national movements in Ireland — the repeal 
agitation and the teetotal movement. 

It was an era of conciliation, and O'Oonnell had agreed 
to accept "Justice to Ireland" as an alternative to repeal, 
and for the promotion of this somewhat indefinite cause he 
founded the Precursor Society, which soon numbered two 
million members, and which on the formation of the Tory 
ministry in 1841 merged into a full-grown and avowed 
repeal association. 

The teetotal movement had been founded some years 
earlier by the Quakers of Cork, but it took no hold on the 
people till Theobald Mathew, a young Capuchin friar, 
joined it in 1838. His unfailing kindness and devotion to 
the poor had already endeared Father Mathew to the 
lowest classes of the community, and, through his influ- 
ence, 156,000 persons took the pledge in the first nine 
months of his mission, and by 1842 he had made a successful 
crusade in every part of his native land. Without any 
special gifts or influence beyond that of goodness, this 
simple friar wrought a moral reformation almost beyond 
belief. The curse of drink seemed banished from Ireland, 
and millions took the pledge. With a rapidly-increasing 
population, crime rapidly decreased; in '39, when the 
movement was beginning, there were twelve thousand 
committals and sixty-four capital sentences, while six years 
later, when the movement was at its height, there were 
but seven thousand committals and fourteen death sen- 
tences. But these statistics give only a very faint picture 
of the extent of the reform. In five years, public opinion 
changed utterly, no man was any longer ashamed to be 
temperate, and many who felt no need to bind themselves 



144: IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

by a pledge abstained from strong drink. The friar wisely, 
and in true Christian spirit, refused to make his mission a 
question of politics or creed, and administered the pledge 
with equal kindliness to Leinster Repealer and Ulster 
Orangeman, and thus a common bond of interest was 
established between creeds and parties. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE REPEAL YEAR. 



The formation of the Peel ministry, in 1841, shattered 
O'ConnelPs hopes of justice to Ireland, and the Precursor 
Society, by a change of name, became the Repeal Associa- 
tion. The movement gained ground rapidly; there was 
abundant oppression and distress, and all the Catholic or 
"lower" nation cried loudly for a change. In the early 
days of the Association the Repealers were almost exclu- 
sively Catholics of the middle or lower class: indeed, the 
peasantry of the three southern provinces became Repealers 
almost to a man. The Anglicans were held back from the 
movement by the conviction that the first act of an Irish 
parliament would be the disestablishment of the English 
Church, and, moreover, O'ConnelPs attitude towards Pro- 
testants was not such as to encourage their national aspira- 
tions. The "Saxon" in any form was abhorrent to O'Con- 
nell, and for purely political purposes he revived the race- 
hatred which had become almost extinct. But the masses 
were blind to the faults of the Liberator, and his eloquence, 
his ready sympathy, his wit, his pathos, his rich and ten- 
der voice, gave him complete mastery over his audience. 
But looking back to a distance of forty years, we can see 
that O'Connell had the faults common to his temperament; 
like most persons of quick sympathies and many moods, 
he was only tolerably truthful and moderately sincere, and, 
like many public orators, he allowed himself to win the 
support and gain the confidence of his public by a species 
of moral bribery, by flattery of his supporters, and whole- 
sale abuse of his antagonists. The personal abuse which 



THE REPEAL YEAH. 145 

he showered upon his opponents can be condoned on the 
score that it was but retaliation in kind for the coarse in- 
vectives and insults they heaped upon himself, but nothing 
can justify or even palliate his deliberate revival of the 
memory of long-forgotten wrongs. For the purpose of 
arousing latent passion, j ie r] re w moving pictures of the 
treachery of Elizabeth at Mullaghmast, the barbarity of 
Cromwell's troops at Wexford and Drogheda, and he even 
asserted that, given the power. England would reproduce 
those acts of treachery and blood. These speeches had a 
twofold result; they made the Irish hate the English, and 
they made the English despise and detest the Irish, for 
had an English orator striven to arouse race-hatred by a 
description of the atrocities of Phelim O'Neill, the only 
sentiment he would have evoked would have been one of 
disgust against himself, and a reaction in favor of the 
Irish, against whom no more modern offences could be 
brought up. But in Ireland it was different; a chain of 
injustice and oppression linked the present with the past, 
and had O'Connell contented himself with anything less 
dramatic than wholesale massacre under a flag of truce, he 
might have made out a very good case without going back 
to the protectorate. 

But though O'Connell's method of agitation pleased the 
peasantry, such young men of the more cultured classes as 
joined the Repealers disapproved strongly of his practice 
of appealing to passions of race and creed. To these young 
men it seemed more to the point that the English govern- 
ment of 1842 was countenancing wholesale eviction than 
that the government of Elizabeth had connived at treach- 
ery. They felt no need to awaken the memory of bygone 
wrongs; it was enough for them that almost one-fourth of 
the cultivable land of a country which was held to be over- 
populated was lying w r aste; that in Mayo, alone, there were 
500,000 acres of improvable waste land; that Catholic peas- 
ants paid tithe for Protestant rectors; that no tenant had 
security for his tenure or compensation for his improve- 
ments; that the rack-rented peasantry had no redress; that 
juries were packed, and the poor law badly administered. 
To air these and other grievances, to give the public a fair 

10 



146 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

view of contemporary history, three young Repealers — 
Thomas Osbourne Davis, John Blake Dillon, and Charles 
Gavan Duffy — founded the Nation newspaper. Such a 
journal was much needed; O'Connell's organ, The Pilot, 
was conducted on the most bigoted principle conceivable, 
and it was the ambition of the founders of the Nation to 
establish a journal worthy of the cause of nationality and 
free from religious bigotry. Like the vast majority of 
Irish leaders, Thomas Davis was a Protestant; Dillon and 
Duffy were staunch Catholics, but absolutely free from 
prejudice or fanaticism, and all were men of exceptional 
talent and purity of motive. Davis was possessed of poetic 
gifts akin to genius. Under the guidance of these young 
men the Nation at once took a high position; indeed, even 
now, after a lapse of more than 40 years, the early num- 
bers are still fresh and interesting, while it is impossible 
to read without emotion some of the patriotic ballads which 
appeared in its pages. Many of the historical articles are 
excellent, but the contemporary articles convey the most 
useful information, and from them we learn that in the 
year 1843, 42,000,000 lbs. of grain, almost 1,000,000 bead 
of live stock, besides great quantities of butter, eggs, and 
bacon, were exported to England alone, while in this same 
year a surplus population of 100,000 souls were forced to 
emigrate, so that had Ireland exported neither food nor 
people those who under existing circumstances were forced 
to emigrate might each have eaten 10 beasts and 420 lbs. 
of grain. 

O'Connell had declared that 1843 should be the repeal 
year, and all through the summer the most intense excite- 
ment prevailed. Enormous multitudes attended the repeal 
meetings, and between forty-eight and forty-nine thousand 
pounds were subscribed for the association. Larger and 
larger grew the meetings; Tara and Mullaghmast had each 
been the scene of a peaceful triumph, and a monster meet- 
ing was announced to take place at Clontarf on Sunday, the 
8th of October. The English government now took alarm, 
and though O'Connell maintained that "'no political re- 
form is worth the spilling of one drop of human blood," 
the attitude of the country was considered dangerous, and 



THE FAMINE. 147 

on Saturday, Sept. 7th, the meeting was proclaimed. 
Many thousands had come up from the country, and it was 
no easy matter to prevent the gathering; but O'Connell 
decreed that the proclamation must be obeyed, and by stren- 
uous exertions the meeting was prevented. But that was 
the real end of O'Conneirs influence. The people began 
to feel that that agitation which repudiates action is pow- 
erless, and that an army pledged not to fight is no defence. 
The proclamation of the Clontarf meeting was followed by 
the arrest of O'Connell and eight other prominent Repeal- 
ers for conspiracy and kindred offences, and in November 
the State trials began. At the conclusion of the trials in 
May, the traversers were all found guilty. O'Connell w r as 
sentenced to a year's imprisonment, and the others to 
shorter terms. The jury had been shamefully and notori- 
ously packed, and the traversers appealed against the judg- 
ment, which was reversed by the House of Lords. The 
released traversers received a triumph; but the repeal 
movement never regained its strength, the repeal year had 
passed, and the union was as firmly established as ever. 
The faith of the masses in the agitation was shaken, and 
there were divided councils in Conciliation Hall, where 
the "Young Ireland Party," as the staff of the Nation 
were called, often found themselves unable to subscribe to 
the ruling of their leader. Throughout '44 the disunion 
increased, and in the autumn of '45 Ireland fell a prey to 
that long agony of famine through which all her energies 
were absorbed in the struggle for dear life. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THE FAMINE. 

The autumn of '45 was cold and wet; chill and persistent 
rains fell over the north of Europe, bringing scarcity and 
disease in their train. The bad weather set in too late to 
affect the wheat crops, but the potatoes were seriously 
damaged, and by the failure of that crop hundreds of thous- 
ands were deprived of their usual food. In Germany, 



148 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

France, Denmark, and Holland, the poor, suffered; but 
the Irish, being more dependent on the potatoes suffered 
more. The whole energy of the people was needed to cope 
with the emergency; all their savings were expended in 
keeping body and soul together, and in buying seed for 
next year's sowing. The winter was one of terrible priva- 
tion; those who had savings lived off them, but among the 
really poor there was widespread destitution. The loss of 
the potato crop was valued at £10,000,000, and to replace 
this with grain would cost £20,000,000, but compared to 
the extent of the calamity the efforts to cope with it were 
lamentably inefficient. The starving peasantry — forced 
to sell their clothes for food — resisted the payment of their 
rent, and where the uttermost farthing was extorted, bar- 
barous outrages were committed. To meet the difficulty, 
a Coercion Bill was passed, but in the early part of winter 
government fearing to overrate the extent of the calamity, 
refused to take further steps; in the beginning of '46, 
however, £50,000 were voted to be expended on public 
works. The amount shows how utterly the government 
failed to realize what the loss of the potato crop meant; it 
was only a two-hundredth part of what was needed to 
replace the loss, and only one quarter of the sum expended 
in the same year on Battersea Park. But the great 
measure of the session was the repeal of the Corn Laws 
which, it was hoped, would prevent a recurrence of such 
terrible scarcity of food. The English manufacturing 
towns had long clamored for their repeal, and in England 
this had become an absolute necessity. Bread was at 
starvation price, and w r as actually scarce; British islands 
were incapable of raising food for their increasing popula- 
tion; and had it not been for the strength of the landed 
interest in parliament, the Corn Laws must have gone 
much earlier. 

It was as a measure of relief for Ireland that these laws 
were now repealed. The protectionist party argued that 
far from giving food to the people of Ireland, the repeal 
of the Corn Laws would ruin them by destroying the 
profits of their only manufacture, and taking away from 
them the very means of procuring subsistence. Time has 



THE FAMINE. 149 

proved that the protectionists were right. The population 
of Ireland was rural, the population of England urban; 
thus the interests of the two islands were diametrically 
opposed. Ireland was the producer, England the consumer. 
For years the producer had enjoyed an artificial and most 
unjust advantage, but the destruction of this advantage 
could hardly be considered a measure for his relief. Ire- 
land was unable to produce food enough for both countries, 
but she was capable of raising abundant food for her own 
population. The famine of '46-'47 was an artificial famine, 
for in this very year that hunger deprived Ireland of a 
quarter of her people, she was the largest export country 
in the world. "The exports of Ireland," says lord George 
Bentinck, "are greater than those of any country in the 
world; not merely more in proportion to its people, or to 
its area, but absolutely more. Its exports of food are 
greater than those of the United States, greater than those 
of Russia;" and throughout the famine year an average 
of 20 steamships laden with food left Ireland daily. In 
the Times, of March 12th, 1849, we find a list of Irish pro- 
duce which on one single day entered the port of London — 
we have, unfortunately, no record of the imports to Liver- 
pool, Bristol, and the smaller ports. "No less than 16 ships 
arrived in the river, laden almost exclusively with food of 
various kinds, the produce of Ireland, having collectively 
14,960 packages of butter; 224 packages of pork; 1,047 
hampers and bales of bacon; several of hams; 140 sacks, 
22.026 barrels, and 7,889 quarters of oats; 434 packages of 
lard; 75 of general provisions; 40 of oatmeal; 44 of porter; 
259 boxes of eggs; and a variety of articles of lesser im- 
portance." The magnificent wheat harvest, the finest 
that ever ripened on Irish soil, had been swept away earlier 
in the season. Let us take a nearer look at this fertile 
country, the greatest food exporter in the world; this 
island which feeds 8,000,000 of the English people, and 
whos^ agricultural produce is valued at £45.000,000. 

All throng i the spring and summer of ? 46 the people 
woiked on in hope; the season was fine, and the potatoes 
looked well, till the magnificent grain crop was whitening 
for the harvest. Then, in July," a blight swept over the 



150 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

land, and in one fortnight the potatoes were totally, utterly 
destroyed; nothing remained, not even enough for send. 
The people endured their loss with an apathy incompre- 
hensible in England. Their food was gone, their savings 
were spent, the blackened, blighted potato tops were a 
sentence of death that the most illiterate could read. 
Weakened by a year of privation, the people met their fate 
with the indifference of ill health and the patience of despair. 
Quietly, without murmur or complaint, they went into their 
cabins, closing the the doors, because the close air made 
them feel less hungry, and so, without remonstrance or 
effort, they watched the departure of the heavy carts of 
golden grain. Potatoes were the exclusive diet of three 
million persons, the staple diet of two million more; — rive 
million persons were without money and without food. It 
was useless to sell food even at a moderate price. Potatoes 
are the very cheapest form of human food, and "to a 
people subsisting on them, no retrenchment is possible. 
They have," said John Stuart Mill, "already reached the 
lowest point of the descending scale, and there is nothing 
beyond but beggary and starvation." The problem of 
how to cope with this famine of the thirteenth century 
with a population of the nineteenth was no easy one to 
solve; and many and various were the plans suggested. 
"Close the exports," cried some; "let us eat our own 
food." "Open the imports," cried others; "import cheap 
grain;" and this indeed was done, but with very limited 
success. 

Fifty thousand pounds were again voted for relief works, 
and, in accordance with the laws of political economy, 
these were strictly unproductive. Roads were broken up, 
and works were set on foot, which, the inspector reported, 
"would answer no other purpose than that of obstructing 
the public conveyances." Further grants of money were 
made, and at a cost of seven or eight thousand pounds 
weekly, good roads were broken up and re-made. The 
Irish party urged that the money would be. better expended 
in draining some of the five million acres of improvable 
waste land; and lord George Bentinck proposed a scheme 
for laying railroads on a large scale, but both projects 



THE FAMINE. 151 

were held to be inimical to private enterprise, and the 
unproductive works were continued. As the winter wore 
on the distress increased. The men, weakened by starva- 
tion, were unable to work, and many reached the spot only 
to faint or die. Some had to walk five or ten miles to 
their work, and were too exhausted to perform the task 
exacted of them; indeed, so reduced were they that in 
some districts attendance was obliged to be considered 
qualification for wage; and one of the superintendents 
reports that "as an employer he was ashamed of allotting 
so little work for a day's wage, while as a man he was 
ashamed of extorting so much" The people crowded into 
the works, and in March 734,000 heads of families, repre- 
senting 3,000,000 persons were thus employed. "A 
nation," said Disraeli, "equal to the population of Holland, 
breaking stones on the road." 

But government was not left to cope with the difficulty 
alone. All over the world hearts were touched by the 
appalling misery of the unhappy nation. So dire was the 
distress that the Quaker commissioners state it would be 
impossible to exaggerate it. Whole families existed on a 
daily ration of a few ounces of oatmeal till death ended 
their sufferings. Typhus of a most malignant and infec- 
tious type raged among them, and the dread of contagion 
overwhelmed even the boundless charity of the poor to- 
ward one another. Save in the case of those stricken with 
fever, there was no limit to the charity of these starving 
people. Mr. W. E. Forster, who was among the most 
zealous of the Quaker commissioners, tells us of more than 
one instance where destitute strangers were housed and fed 
by families who could rely only on a few ounces of thin 
gruel for food. "Never," writes another authority," have 
I witnessed so much good feeling, patience, and cheerful- 
ness under privation. I hardly remember an instance of 
their murmuring or begging." On the public works the 
same good feeling prevailed; those whose claims w T ere re- 
jected in favor of a still more distressed applicant submit- 
ting with a cheerful patience for which any praise would 
be insulting. The suffering from cold was only second to 
that from hunger. During the scarcity of the preceding 



152 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

year no new clothes had been bought, and many old ones 
sold, so that the poorer peasantry were almost naked. 
The children suffered least, for the parents stripped and 
starved that their little one should have food and covering. 
Indeed, in all accounts of this fearful misery, the one 
bright spot is the touching and unparalleled unselfishness 
of the people. Perhaps the most horrible of all the horrors 
of this time was the fearful condition of the workhouses. 
The Irish hatred of the poorhouse gave way before the 
pangs of hunger, and the unions were filled to overflowing. 
In these loathsome lazar-houses typhus, starvation, filth, and 
death reigned supreme. Dead and dying lay in one bed 
or side by side on the floor, and the poorhouse was known 
to be the gateway to the tomb. 

The condition of the towns was no better than that of 
the country; the people below the middle class were re- 
duced literally to skeletons, and the whole of the poorer 
class were starving. An appalling picture of the state of 
Cork is given by the late Mr. A. M. Sullivan in his sketches 
of "New Ireland." "Daily in the street and on the foot- 
way some poor creature lay down as if to sleep, and pres- 
ently was still and stark. In our district it was a common 
occurrence to find, on opening the front door in the early 
morning, leaning against it the corpse of some victim who 
in the night had 'rested' in its shelter. We raised a public 
subscription, and employed two meu with horse and cart 
to go round each day to gather up the dead. One by one 
they were taken to Ardnabrahair Abbey, and dropped 
through the hinged bottom of a 'trap coffin' into a com- 
mon grave below. In the rural districts even this rude 
sepulcher Avas impossible In the fields and by the ditches 
the victims lay as they fell, till some charitable hand was 
found to cover them with the adjacent soil." In the at- 
tempt to assuage this awful misery, devoted men and 
women were daily laying down their lives. The resident 
landlords, for the most part, did their duty well — estab- 
lishing soup coppers and distributing cooked food. Many 
remitted their rent or half their rents, and if others were 
exacting and extorted their full legal dues, w T e must remem- 
ber that their estates were often so deeply mortgaged that 



THE FAMINE. 153 

they were only less destitute than the tenantry, and, in 
some cases, were thankful to accept a daily ration of cooked 
food. Several of their body fell victims to their devotion, 
and a large number of doctors and of the clergy died of 
fever, caught in the performance of their duty. 

At last the sowing time came round again, and it waa 
found that sickness, death, the poorhouse, the emigrant 
ship, and the public works, had absorbed the male popula- 
tion. It was clear that political economy was ruining the 
country, and government now adopted the cooked food 
system which they had rejected as pauperizing, but which 
had been employed by private charity throughout. The 
cooked food relief proved much more efficacious and less 
expensive than the public works. The rations, including 
all expenses, cost only 2d. each, and the total expenditure 
in meal was only a million and a-half out of the millions 
which were advanced out of the Imperial exchequer, half 
as a loan to be repaid, and half as a free grant to 
meet the expenses of the famine. But public works, 
free food, poor-law, and charity, were insufficient to 
cope with this vast distress, and east to England 
and west to America fled the stricken multitude, carrying 
everywhere the seeds of deadly disease, till England, to 
protect herself, subjected ships with steerage passengers to 
quarantine, and several companies raised the rate of steer- 
age passage. Westward now was the only escape from fam- 
ine, and the poor wretches flooded the emigrant ships to 
Canada and the United States. 

The ships were terribly overcrowded, carrying double 
the legal number of passengers, and here, as in the work- 
houses, filth and mismanagement had it all their own way: 
the death-rate on the passage rose to twelve times its usual 
extent, and many were landed in such a diseased condition 
that the deaths in quarantine increased from one and one 
third to forty per thousand. In Montreal alone eight 
hundred emigrants died in nine weeks, and in six months 
the deaths amounted to three thousand. Of the hundred 
thousand Irish who fled to Canada in the black '47 one 
out of every five died on the voyage or on their arrival; 
one out of every three was received into a hospital, and the 



15.4 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

remainder dispersed among the population, carrying death 
everywhere, and shunned and dreaded for the contagion 
they brought with them. Too weak to work, too poor to 
live without work, the condition of the Irish emigrant 
was pitiable. The labor market in the towns was over- 
stocked, and these half -starved people were little fitted for 
backwoods settlers. Such settlers must have means of 
support from twelve to fifteen months after their arrival, 
and this cannot be accomplished for less than sixty pounds 
per family at the lowest estimate, whereas these emigrants 
had nothing — not even health. The subject of emigration 
has been discussed with much heat by its advocates and 
opponents, and in the case of Ireland the subject has been 
approached with peculiar bitterness. England argues that 
the miseries of Ireland are due to over-population, and 
Ireland maintains that a country capable in a year of fam- 
ine of producing food for sixteen million persons, and con- 
taining five million acres of waste but improvable land 
cannot be said to be too thickly peopled. The falseness 
of the over-population theory receives some support from 
the fact that, when Swift wrote his "modest proposal," 
Ireland, with two million inhabitants, was worse off than 
she was in '41 with more than four times that population, 
and in 1886, now that the population has been reduced to 
between four and five millions, she is little better off than 
when she fed double as many at home and was a larger 
exporter of food. An extract from the able paper on the em- 
igration question by Sir Charles Trevelyan, and published 
in the Edinhuvgh Review of 1848, makes a fitting close to 
the sad chapter of the famine of '47. 

"There is no subject of which a merely one-sided view 
is more commonly taken than that of emigration. The 
evils arising from the crowded state of the population, and 
the facility with which large numbers of persons may be 
transferred to other countries, are naturally uppermost in 
the minds of landlords and ratepayers; but her majesty's 
government, to which the well-being of the British popu- 
lation in every quarter of the globe is confided, must have 
an equal regard to the interests of the emigrant and of the 
colonial community of which he may become a member. 



THE FAMINE. 155 

It is a great mistake to suppose that even Canada and the 
United States have an unlimited capacity of absorbing a 
new population. The labor market in the settled district 
is always so nearly full that a small addition to the persons 
in search of employment makes a sensible difference; while 
the clearing of land requires the possession of resources 
and a power of sustained exertion not ordinarily belonging 
to the newly arrived Irish emigrant. In this, as well as in 
the other operations by which society is formed and sus- 
tained, there is a natural process which cannot be with 
impunity departed from. A movement is continually go- 
ing on toward the backwoods on the part of the young and 
enterprising portion of the settled population, and of such 
of the former emigrants as have acquired means and ex- 
perience; and the room thus made is occupied by persons 
recently arrived from Europe who have only their labor to 
depend on. The conquest of the wilderness requires more 
than the ordinary share of energy and perseverance, and 
every attempt that has yet been made to turn paupers into 
backwoodsmen has ended in signal failure. As long as 
they were rationed, they held together in a feeble, helpless 
state; and when the issue of the rations ceased they gen- 
erally returned to the settled parts of the country. Our re- 
cent experience of the effects of a similar state of depend- 
ence in Ireland offers no encouragement to renew the ex- 
periment in a distant country where the difficulties are so 
much greater, and a disastrous result would be so much 
less capable of being retrieved. . . . Those who have 
inherited or purchased estates in which a redundant pop- 
ulation has been allowed to grow up may with propriety 
assist some of their people to emigrate, provided they take 
care to prevent their being left destitute on their arrival in 
their new country. The expense of assisting emigration 
under such circumstances properly falls on the proprietor. 
A surplus population, whether it be owing to the fault or 
the misfortune of the proprietor or his predecessors, must 
be regarded as one of the disadvantages contingent on the 
possession of the estate; and he who enjoys the profit and 
advantage of the estate must also submit to the less desir- 
able conditions connected with it. So lon<r as emigration 



156 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

is conducted only at the expense of the proprietor it is not 
likely to be carried to a dangerous or an injurious extent, 
and it will press so heavily on his resources as to leave the 
motives to exertion of a different kind unimpaired. Emi- 
gration is open to objection only when the natural checks 
and correctives have been neutralized by the interposition 
of government or other public bodies. It then becomes 
the interest and policy of the landed proprietor to make 
no exertion to maintain his peopled home, to produce a 
general impression that no such exertion could be success- 
fully made, and to increase by every possible means the 
pressure upon those parties who, having the command of 
the pubile funds, are expected to giv3 their assistance; and 
the responsibility of the consequences, whatever they may 
be, becomes transferred from the individual proprietors tc 
the government or public body which countenances and 
promotes their proceedings." 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

YOUNG IRELAND. 



The action of the government in proclaiming the Clon- 
tarf meeting forced O'Connell's hand. To forbid such a 
gathering at such a short notice was a dangerous measure, 
and might have ended in riot and bloodshed; but the coup 
was a complete success, and by that one blow the neck of 
the repeal movement w T as broken. It was not that the 
crushing power of the government had asserted itself, but 
the Repealers had been forced to ask themselves what this 
peaceful agitation meant, and whither it was leading them? 
and they found that it meant nothing and was leading them 
nowhere. The younger men were as opposed as O'Conneli 
himself to the idea of insurrection: they knew that nothing 
but dire necessity could justify such a course, but they 
could not subscribe to their leader's motto, that no political 
reform is worth the shedding of cue drop of human blood; 
still, this being merely a theoretic principle, the young 
men would willingly have left it in abeyance had O'Con- 



YOUNG IRELAND. 157 

nell been content to let it rest an open question. The split 
between the Nation party and the Conciliation Hall arose 
from a fundamental difference of aim and idea. O'Con- 
nelPs Ireland was the Ireland of Catholic and Celt; he 
cared nothing for Protestants or Anglo-Irishmen. The 
patriotism of the Nation party was wider; they wished to 
make the Ulster Presbyterian feel that he was every whit 
as much an Irishman as the Connaught Catholic. Thomas 
Davis, their inspiring spirit, was a Protestant and the son 
of a Welshman; Smith O'Brien, Mitchel, and Martin were 
also Protestants; and though two out of the three founders 
of the Nation were Catholics, they refused to constitute 
their paper a Catholic journal; it was simply political, 
without any denominational bias. For this O'Connell stig- 
matized the Nation as an infidel print and Davis as an un- 
believer; but in 1845 Davis died, and O'Connell ceased his 
invectives on the Young Irelanders. About this time it 
began to be rumored that O'Connell was negotiating with 
the Whigs, and ultimately the negotiations were actually 
begun. The Young Irelanders protested, and O'Connell 
took offence at the language they used. Finally he required 
a formal renunciation of the principles of armed rebellion, 
and this the Young Irelanders would not give. The cele- 
brated two days' debate ensued, and it resulted in the 
Young Irelanders, headed by Smith O'Brien, leaving the 
hall in a body, 

The rupture was now complete; the youth, the talent, 
and the enthusiasm of the country had left the association, 
but the priesthood and the peasantry remained faithful to 
the old party. The very name of O'Connell had magic in 
it; O'Connell was the Catholic, the Celt, the Liberator, the 
founder of repeal; O'Connell, too, was the champion of the 
Church; the preacher of the beautiful doctrine that right is 
might, and peace more invincible than war. The Young 
Irelanders occupied a far less popular platform, and ap- 
pealed to only a very restricted public. Their leader, Will- 
iam Smith O'Brien, was indeed descended from Brian 
Boru, but there was "too much of the Smith and too little 
of the O'Brien about him" for popularity, and he was a 
Protestant, a landlord, and the member for Ennis. Davis, 



158 IRISH HISTOEY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

too, was a Protestant; the son of a Welsh gentleman who 
had settled in Mallow and married an Irish wife. He had 
been educated at Trinity College, and was a member of the 
Irish bar, but never practiced. His influence on his party 
had been mainly personal, and was the result of a singular- 
ly chivalric and enthusiastic nature, tempered by an intense 
love of justice. He was a profound Celtic scholar, and 
one of the finest ballad writers of Ireland; but his life of 
nine-and-twenty years was an active one, and his literary 
remains are quite insufficient to account for his great in- 
fluence. His nearest friend, and fellow-founder of the Na- 
tion, was John Blake Dillon, a young Catholic barrister, 
who, though possessed of a singularly sweet and gentle na- 
ture, was destined to take the most active part in the rising 
of '48. The third founder, and the editor of the Nation, 
was Mr. (now Sir) Charles Gavan Duffy. But the most 
remarkable man of the party was John Mitchel. The son 
of a non-conformist mimister, who had himself been a 
United Irishman, Mitchel had been raised in an atmosphere 
of hatred to English rule. He joined the staff of the Na- 
tion soon after its foundation, but in '47 he resigned, and 
started the United Irishmen "for the purpose of inculcat- 
ing the holy hatred of English rule." Thus in the same 
year in which by O'CdnnelPs death repeal lost its great 
champion, separation for the first time since Emmet's re- 
bellion found a powerful advocate. For Mitchel, reckless 
and embittered as he was, was a man of mental power and 
literary talent. The United Irishman '-had been preaching 
the gospel of hatred for only ten days when the sudden 
revolutionary outbreak in Paris convinced the Young Ire- 
landers that the moment to strike for liberty was come. 
The terrible incapacity of the government to cope with the 
potato famine seemed pre of to the gentler spirits among 
the Irish Nationalists of the ignorance of England, while 
the wilder natures attributed the mismanagement to ill- 
will. During the last two years, a quarter of the people 
of Ireland had been swept away, and the Nation party and 
the Mitchelites were both convinced that by some means 
the harvest of '48 must be retained in Ireland. Then, in 
February, the French revolution determined them to fight. 



YOUNG IRELAND. 159 

The Nation party implored Mitchel to adopt some secrecy, 
but for three months his extraordinary paper instructed 
the populace in the arts and mysteries of street warfare, 
and made the most treasonous confidences to the lord lieu- 
tenant. It was a paper no government could tolerate. 
.Mitchel was seized, tried, and convicted of treason-felony, 
and sentenced to fourteen years transportation. Within 
two weeks of his conviction, a new revolutionary journal, 
the Irish Tribune, edited by Dr. Kevin Izod O'Doherty 
and D'Alton Williams, succeeded the United Irishman, 
and a fortnight later the first number of the Irish Felon 
appeared, edited by John Martin, a Protestant country 
gentleman of County Down. Five weeks later, Martin, 
Williams, Dr. Kevin Izocl O'Doherty, and Sir Charles 
Gavin Duffy were arrested; the Habeas Corpus Act was 
suspended, and the warrants issued against Smith O'Brien 
and Meagher — the most eloquent speaker of the party. 

The Young Irelanders were now pledged to insurrection; 
the government, by forcing a premature explosion of the 
rebellion, had ruined their already desperate game, but, 
pledged as they were, they felt that to men of honor the 
only course was to rise before the warrants were put into 
execution. Smith O'Brien, Dillon, Meagher and others 
went down into the country and tried to prevail on the 
people to take up arms. But the peasantry knew nothing 
of the Young Irelanders, save that they had been denounced 
by O'Connell and were disliked by the priests, and the 
poor creatures were too enervated by starvation and disease, 
to care to fight. The rebels had neither arms, commissariat, 
nor plan of action, and the rebellion was a miserable col- 
lapse. At Killenaule a barricade was erected, under com- 
mand of Dillon, and at Ballingarry, Smith O'Brien headed 
a small skirmish in a cabbage garden, and then the rebel- 
lion was over. Smith O'Brien, M'Manus, O'Donohue, and 
Meagher were tried for high treason, and sentenced to be 
hanged, beheaded, and quartered; but the sentences were 
at once remitted to transportation. Dillon and P. J. Smyth 
escaped to America, Dr. O'Doherty and Martin were sen- 
tenced to ten years transportation, Williams was acquitted, 
and the prosecution of Sir C. G-. Duffy was abandoned after 



1G0 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

two trials, ending in the disagreement of the jury. The 
life sentences were in no case carried out. Mitchel escaped 
with the assistance of P. J. Smyth, and the other prisoners 
and refugees were pardoned by a general amnesty in '54. 
Smith O'Brien never again took any part in politics, and 
died in '64. Sir C. G. Duffy left Ireland and became prime 
minister of Victoria; M'Manus, after his death, was the 
unconscious ajjostle of Fenianism in Ireland; Mitchel was 
elected a member of parliament, but died before taking his 
seat; John Martin, P. J. Smyth, and John Dillon, all be- 
came members of parliament, and Dr. Kevin Izod O'Do- 
lierty, after a successful medical career in Australia, has 
entered parliament as a follower of Mr. Parnell and a col- 
league of Mr. John Dillon, the son of John Dillon of '48. 
The rising of '48 quelled the national movement as utterly 
as Emmet's rebellion had done five-and-forty years before, 
and for a time there was nothing heard of disaffection in 
Ireland. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE LAND. 



The nunger and the fever of the black '47 left a legacy 
of misery and want to those who survived them. The 
years which had starved the tenant had utterly ruined the 
poorer landlords. Rents had been paid in only a small pro- 
portion of cases, and in '48 many of the tenants, instead 
of being able to pay, were dependent on the charity of the 
landlord. During the famine years the majority of resi- 
dent landlords had done their utmost to relieve the misery 
which surrounded them. But, when the famine was past, 
self interest reasserted itself, and the war between landlord 
and tenant was waged with renewed vigor. Throughout 
the country the bitter struggle continued — the tenant keep- 
ing a grip on the land by means of intimidation, outrage, 
and murder; the landlord rack-renting and evicting him 
with the help of the civil and military resources of the law. 
From time to time select committees had been appointed 
to inquire into the condition of Ireland, and almost all 



THE LAND. 1G1 

these committees reported that the disturbed state of the 
country was due to the unfortunate nature of the relation 
between landlord and tenant. 

The land question has an importance in Ireland infinitely 
greater than England, for in Ireland farming is practically 
the only business. This being so, the whole population is 
thrown on to the land, and there is never the slightest diffi- 
culty in getting a tenant. To obtain possession, men are 
willing to promise to pay impossible rents, and to retain it 
pay rents which keep them on the verge of starvation. 
Eviction is the one dread of the Irish tenant, for once 
evicted he has before him only emigration, the workhouse, 
or the grave. In 1845 the Devon Commission reported: — 
"(1.) That all improvements in the soil were made by the 
tenant; (2.) that these improvements were subject to con- 
fiscation, and were confiscated by the landlord; (3.) that 
the outrage system sprang from the ejectment system; and 
(4.) that it was necessary for parliament to intervene to 
compel the landlord to recoup the tenant for his outlay on 
the land." 

Until 1870 the tenant had not even a nominal right to 
the value of the improvements he had made; the custom 
of the tenant making the improvements had endured from 
time immemorial, and consequently a great part of the 
value of the estate was justly theirs. Yet tenants were 
liable to be rented on the very improvements that they had 
made and paid for, and on their eviction these improve- 
ments became the property of the landlord. In some cases 
the improvements raised the value of the property enor- 
mously, as on the Clomber estate, which at the end of the 
last century had had a rent roll of £3,000 a year; whereas 
in 1850 its annual value was £24,000. The barony of Fer- 
ney, too, originally worth £3,000 a-year, was, by tenants' 
improvements, raised by 1854 to an annual value of £50,- 
000. In the first of these cases seven-eighths of the value 
of the property was the creation of time and the ten- 
ant; and in the second, tenants' improvements had raised 
the value of the property to nearly seventeen times the 
original worth; but by eviction the landlord could confis- 
cate the whole of the capital which the tenant had sunk in 

11 



102 IKISH HISTOEY FOE ENGLISH EEADEES. 

the soil, and the tenant had no security against eviction. 
The commonest cause of eviction was non-payment of rent, 
but in a great many cases the middleman, not the tenant, 
was the defaulter; yet, in turning out the middleman, the 
landlord also evicted tillers of the soil; an enormous num- 
ber of evictions were also made for the purpose of consolidat- 
ing farms, and some from sheer caprice, religious bigotry, 
or disobedience to the rules of the estate. In the ten years 
following the famine Ireland was a land of evictions; during 
1851, 257,372 persons emigrated, and in the following year 
the number rose to 368,372. Between '49 and '56 nearly 
a million and a half persons left Ireland, and "not far from 
one in every five of the multitudes who have swarmed 
across the Atlantic had been driven by positive physical 
violence from their homes." "There is not," said Mr. 
John Bright, speaking of the evicting landlords of 1850, 
"I say there is not a human being in existence who ought 
to be more generally scouted than the individual who could 
commit atrocities like those which have been brought be- 
fore the House." 

In estimating the bitterness of feeling caused by rack- 
renting and eviction, we must therefore keep clearly before 
our minds, that land to the tenant was a matter of life and 
death; that by eviction the tenant forfeited his capital; 
that knowing this the landlord knew he would submit to 
any increase of rent rather than forfeit his tenure, and that 
in consequence of the absence of trade in Ireland the de- 
mand for land was greatly in excess of the supply. There 
was, therefore, no freedom of contract between landlord 
and tenant; by losing his holding the tenant lost his all, 
and a sentence of eviction was equivalent to a sentence of 
death. The landlord's view was that the land was his own 
— a commodity to be sold in the best market. Men who 
have possessed salt, and corn, and water in times of siege 
and famine have sometimes traded in the same manner 
on the necessities of their fellows, and have commonly met 
with the fate that befell many of the Irish landlords. 

On the other hand, it must be admitted that the Irish 
landlords, in 1848, were placed in an extremely difficult 
position; the estates of many were deeply mortgaged, and 



THE LAND. M38 

they depended on the rents not only for their subsistence, 
but for the money wherewith to pay the interest of their 
encumbrances. Under these circumtsances the tempta- 
tion to wring the most out of the land was almost irresist- 
ible; the system of annual tenancy had bred an idle and 
stingy method of farming; the repeal of the Corn Laws 
had ruined the agricultural interest, and it was believed 
that scientific farming and grazing would yield a better 
profit. Large farming was the hobby of the day, and for 
the consolidation of farms a perfect eviction fever set in. 
On some estates as many as 700 persons were forcibly eject- 
ed on a single day. The sick, the aged, the little children, 
and the women big with child were alike thrust forth un- 
der summer sun or the cold snows of winter, and to pre- 
vent their return their cabins were unroofed and levelled 
to the ground. The wailing of the women, the cries of 
the children, the still more piteous despair of the strong 
men was such that the constabulary, whose sad duty it was 
to carry out these ejectments, often wept as bitterly as 
their victims. Shelter there was none; the few remaining 
tenants were forbidden to receive the outcasts, and on some 
estates they were even driven from the shelter of the ditches. 
The majority, left penniless by the preceding years of fam- 
ine, wandered aimlessly about roads and bogs till they found 
a refuge in the workhouse or the grave; others swarmed 
over to England, and by underselling the market, ousted 
the English laborer from the harvest field; such as had 
funds took ship for America. The fate of these poor crea- 
tures could but be deplorable; they and their forefathers 
had lived their lives on the same plot of ground, and their 
affections, like their capital, were centered in that one spot 
of earth. Many could speak no English, and these friend- 
less, penniless strangers brought with them to America 
nothing but an undying hatred of the power that had rob- 
bed them and deprived them of their homes. The over- 
population of Ireland was fast being remedied. In 1841 
the population of Ireland had been over eight million; 
twenty years later it was between five and six. "In a few 
more years," wrote the Times, "a Celtic Irishman will be 
as rare in Connemara as is the Red Indian on the shores 



164 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

of the Manhattan/' and the same organ discovered that 
by a curious freak of nature Irishmen removed to "the 
banks of the Ganges, or the Indus — to Delhi, Benares, or 
Trincomalee — would be far more in their element than in 
a country to which an inexorable fate had confined them." 

But besides the Celtic tenancy there was another class 
which needed removal, and that was the debt-laden land- 
lords; and in the interests of this class, and in the hope of 
creating a class of landlords who would make all improve- 
ments themselves, the Encumbered Estates Act was passed 
in 1849. The act provided that a court of commissioners 
should be established in Dublin, with discretionary power 
to sell any encumbered estate on the petition of the owner 
or of any creditor of that estate, and to give the buyer an 
indefeasible title. Such a measure had long been needed 
by the Irish landlords, but much of its good was done away 
with by passing it at a moment Avhen Irish land was a drug- 
in the market. The landlord was now forced by his cred- 
itors to pay or quit, and many noble estates were sold at 
prices which failed even to realize the value of the mort- 
gages, and were resold a few years later for nearly double 
the sum that the old owners had obtained for them. In 
its second object, of creating a class of English landlords, 
the lull failed utterly, for of the 7,489 purchasers who, up 
to August, '57, availed themselves of the act, only 309 were 
English, Scotch, or foreigners, and of the twenty millions 
and a half realized by the court, seventeen and a half mil- 
lions was Irish capital. Thus the bill did absolutely noth- 
ing for the tenant; the new landlords were of the same 
class as the old, and managed the estates on the old system. 
The relation of landlord and tenant was unchanged; rack- 
renting, eviction, and confiscation of tenants' improvements 
on the one hand was met by outrage, murder, and intimi- 
dation on the other. 

The Encumbered Estates Act having failed to relieve 
the tenants, a number of Irishmen founded, in 1850, the 
Irish Tenant League, for the purpose of securing for the 
tenantry of the other three provinces the advantages of the 
Ulster Tenant Right, and at the general election of '52 
half the Irish members returned were nominally members 



the la xi). L65 

of the Tenant League. By this party was founded the 
policy of "Independent opposition/' whereby Irish mem- 
bers unite and form a third party, pledged to uncomprom- 
ising opposition to every ministry that refuses or delays to 
settle the Irish land question. But the opposition of the 
Tenant League party was of short duration, for when, in 
the following December, Lord Aberdeen was called on to 
form a ministry, several of the Tenant League party ac- 
cepted office. The tenant claims were, however, still for- 
warded by Sharman Crawford, Sir C. CI. Duffy, Napier, 
Poulett Scrope, Shee, J. F. Maguire, Isaac Butt, and 
George Henry Moore, and various bills were introduced in 
successive years, but without success. In 1855 Lord Aber- 
deen resigned, and a Whig ministry was formed, with Pal- 
merston, the bold enunciator that "Tenant Right is Land- 
lord Wrong,"' as premier. 

The prospects of the tenants now went from bad to 
worse; every measure brought in by the Irish party was 
defeated by an overwhelming majority; and the govern- 
ment Land Bill of 1800 was so unworkable that it remained 
a dead letter. The desperate tenantry, abandoned by the 
law, sought to redress their grievances by the power of 
Whiteboyism, and in 1802 the outrages reached the num- 
ber of 303. Since '47 Ireland had been governed by an 
unbroken series of Coercion Acts, and no further repres- 
sive legislation was possible, but the storm of '02 was purely 
agrarian, and was succeeded by a calm. "'Repeal was bur- 
ied; disaffection had disappeared; nationality was unmen- 
tioned; not a shout was raised; not even a village tenant 
club survived." Evictions proceeded briskly; the surplus 
population was shipped off by the thousand daily to Amer- 
ica; still no voice was raised, no agitator roused the pas- 
sions of the people. Political agitation being dead, agrarian 
outrages on the decrease, it seemed to England that Ireland 
had no further wrongs to be rio-hted, that the Celts were 
gone, and that in depopulation the government had at last 
solved the problem of how to govern Ireland peacefully. 



166 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 

FENIANISM. 

But there is a quiet that is not peace; a still that is not 
calm, but the listening hush of expectation. When on a 
breezy day the wind drops suddenly, and the leaves are 
still, we know that a storm is brewing, and that soon not 
only the leaves but the branches will rock wildly to and 
fro; so, too, the leaders of men and students of human 
nature should know that when men no longer cry out 
against hunger, nakedness, and oppression, it is not that 
discontent has ceased, but that a storm is brewing. 

In 1854 a general amnesty pardoned the rebels of '48, 
and allowed such as wished to return to Ireland to do so. 
They were received with little enthusiasm, and the govern- 
ment concluded that ''Irish disaffection was dead and 
buried, and would never trouble the English people more" 
But in truth the '48 leaders were received coolly, not 
because the people found them too extreme, but because 
they looked upon them as reactionaries. It must be re- 
membered that the disaffected Irish have always been 
divided into two distinct and often antagonistic parties; 
the Separatists and the anti-Unionists. From time to time 
they have acted together, but at heart they are utterly 
distinct. In the rebellion of 1641 the old Irish, under 
Rory O'More and Phelim O'Neill, were Separatists, and 
the Anglo-Irish, who subsequently made common cause 
with them, were Home Rulers; but the rebellion of 1G41 
was mainly Separatist, and its failure turned the scale of 
national opinion in favor of the Home Rule party for many 
years to come, and the agitation of Grattan and the Irish 
volunteers, ending in so-called parliamentary independ- 
ence, was 'a Home Rule movement. But the independent 
parliament failed to secure justice for Ireland, five-sixths 



FEN LAN ISM. 107 

of the people still labored under grievous disabilities; land 
laws were unjust; the poor oppressed by unjux tastation; 
the government corrupt, and the parliament, filled with a 
venal crew of placemen, was merely a tool in the[/hands of 
an English statesman. The Home Rule policy, therefore, 
was judged a mistake, and public opinion swung over to 
the side of the Separatists. The crushing failures of '98 
and in 1803 stamped out the Separatist theory, and through 
the years of the repeal agitation the Separatist party seemed 
utterly extinguished, but after the famine of '47 some of 
the Home Rulers developed into Separatists, and on the 
extinction of the repeal agitation men's minds again 
turned toward separation. Thus each party was in the 
ascendant turn and turn about, and the failure of each has 
alternately turned the hopes of the disaffected Irish into 
the opposite channel. 

The Fenian movement originated among some of the 
expatriated '48 men and the victims of the famine clear- 
ances; it was first called the Phoenix Society, and was 
introduced into Ireland by Mr. James Stephens in '58, 
when the army of England was engaged in quelling the 
Indian mutiny. Stephens was himself a rebel of '48 who 
had succeeded in escaping to America, and he was a man 
o£ great courage, energy, and power of will. Among his 
first converts was Jeremiah Donovan, a young Skibereen 
man, who soon afterward improved his name by the prefix 
(V and the affix Rossa. 0' Donovan Rossa was in those 
days a dashing, popular, enthusiastic youth, and soon 
induced ninety of the hundred members of the Skibereen 
club to join this secret society, whose secrecy was so 
tremendous that its existence was known everywhere, and 
it was denounced from almost every Catholic altar in the 
kingdom and in the pages of the Nation. The combined 
action of the priesthood and the press checked the growth 
of the society; but on December 3d a viceregal proclama- 
tion was issued stating that a public danger existed, and 
a few days later the members of the dying conspiracy were 
immortalized by arrest. Owing to the unhappy associa- 
tion of law with oppression in Ireland, to arrest a man is 
to secure him the sympathy of the people, and the Phce- 



168 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

nix conspirators, hitherto denounced or ignored, were now 
the popular heroes. But the affair ended tamely enough; 
the prisoners pleaded guilty and were released, and there 
was an end of the Phoenix conspiracy. Meanwhile, under 
the name of the Irish Revolutionary Brotherhood, the 
society was growing quickly among the American Irish — 
the outcasts of the famine clearances; but in Ireland it 
had two great enemies to contend with; the open policy 
party were dead against it, and the priesthood used every 
means in their power to crush it, and had it not been for 
the M'Manus funeral it might perhaps never have taken 
root. 

M 'Maims was one of the '48 leaders who had been con- 
victed and transported to Van Diemen's Land whence he. 
had escaped to San Francisco in 1851, where ten years later 
he died. lie had been by no means one of the most 
influential of his party in Ireland, but was much beloved 
in America, and after he had been buried it was resolved 
to take his body home and lay it in his native earth, and 
this project was carried out in the autumn of '62. The 
funeral preparations were made on a scale which surprised 
every one, and along the whole line from San Francisco 
to Dublin formed one of the most impressive demonstra- 
tions ever seen. The Fenians had managed to get the 
affair into their hands, and they utilized the funeral, and 
the feelings and memories it aroused, to the utmost. Till 
then they had been unable to obtain a firm footing in 
Ireland, but during the three weeks occupied by the 
obsequies they established the organization, and swore in 
great numbers of Fenians. A year later, at a meeting of 
Irishmen in Chicago, the existence of this society for 
establishing the independence of Ireland by force of arms 
was publicly announced, and at the same time a Fenian 
journal, the Irish People, was established in Ireland, under 
the management of John O'Leary, Thomas Clark Luby, 
and Charles James Kickham, all men of rare intellectual 
gifts and high moral character. The object of this paper 
was to inculcate the doctrine of armed resistance, and 
to warn the people not to trust in constitutional agitation; 
for two years the work of organization continued, but in 



n:\iA\isM. KiO 

September. 1805, Luby. O'Leary. Hossaj Kickham, ami 
others were arrested, and a month later Stephens was taken 
at his own house. Ten days later all Europe rang with 
the news that the Fenian leader had escaped from Richmond 
gaol through the connivance of his gaolers, who were 
Fenians too. For some months he remained in Dublin, 
hut, though huge rewards were offered for him, he was 
never retaken. In November the other prisoners were 
arraigned on a charge of treason-felony, and the trials 
revealed the extent of the movement, which had penetrated 
to almost every part of Ireland; and no less appalling to 
the loyal mind was the fact that the prisoners, far from 
being Whiteboy leaders, were men of education, who bore 
themselves bravely and like gentlemen. They were all 
found guilty, and sentenced to penal servitude for terms 
varying from ten to twenty years. But the action of the 
government and the imprisonment of the leaders did not 
check the growth of Fenianism, although internal dis- 
sension, the Nemesis of rebellion, was weakening the 
organiaztion. The American war was over, and Irishmen 
who had ginned a knowledge of military tactics in the 
armies of North and South swelled the number of the Irish 
Republican Brotherhood. In 18G0 the movement was at 
its height, the loyal Irish were paralyzed with fear, and in 
February the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. This 
checked the movement. Many of the leaders fled, others 
were arrested ; but in the autumn preparations for rebellion 
were again set on foot, and large quantities of arms were 
seized by the coastguards. It is noteworthy that in this 
year the agrarian outrages sank to 87, the lowest number 
on record. Early in '67 an attempt at insurrection was 
made in several parts of Ireland, but owing to the disunion 
of the Fenians themselves, the vigor of the administration, 
and the treachery of informers, the rebellion was a fiasco. 
hi England things were more serious, and had it not been 
for the information of traitors the design to seize Chester 
Castle and its 20,000 stand of arms might have succeeded. 
Numerous arrests and convictions followed, but as yet the 
last was not heard of Fenianism. 

On the 18th September two Fenian prisoners were being 



170 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

conveyed from the Manchester police court to the city 
gaol. On the way the prison van was stopped by a small 
body of armed men; the horses were shot, the escort 
dispersed, and the rescuers called to the constable who sat 
within to unlock the door. The police officer, Charles 
Brett, gallantly refused and some one in the crowd called 
to Allen, the leader of the Fenians, to fire the lock off. 
Unhappily Brett at that moment had approached his eye 
to the keyhole to see what was going on outside, and the 
bullet which had been intended for the door gave him a 
mortal wound. A woman who was within took the keys 
from the dead man's pocket, and handed them through 
the ventilator; the doors were opened, the prisoners 
escaped, but several arrests were made, and five men were 
tried for the murder of Brett, found guilty, and sentenced 
to death. One of the prisoners pleaded that he was not a 
Fenian and had been arrested in mistake, and so slight 
was the evidence against him that the press reporters who 
had been present at the trial, signed a memorial praying 
for his release, and on further investigation, it was found 
that his arrest had been a blunder, and the finding of the 
jury a mistake. Another of the prisoners was spared 
in consideration of his being an American citizen, but the 
three, Allen, Larkin, and O'Brien were publicly executed 
on the 23d November. There could be no doubt that the 
sentence had been terribly severe; the theory at the time 
was, that an example must be made to deter others from 
such feats of reckless daring; but in England, after the 
first horror at the lawlessness of the deed had died out, 
much sympathy was felt for the rebels, and Mr. Bright, 
Mr. John Stuart Mill, and Mr. Swinburne strove, but 
strove vainly, to save their lives. In Ireland the feeling 
was, and still is, tremendous; the rescue was looked upon 
as a valiant and patriotic deed; and, in honor of the "Man- 
chester martyrs," commemorative funerals were organized 
throughout the country: in Dublin, though the day was 
wet and cold, 150,000 persons took part in the demonstra- 
tion. In indignation of what was considered the legal 
murder of these young men, the Home Rulers and 
Separatists laid aside their difference, and Mr. A. M. 



FKNIANISM. Ill 

Sullivan, the denouncer of Fenianism, thus described the 
funerals: — "As the three hearses bearing the names of the 
executed men passed through the streets, the multitudes 
that lined the way fell on their knees, every head was bared, 
and not a sound was heard save the solemn notes of the 
'Dead March in Saul,' from the bands, or the sobs that 
burst occasionally from the crowd." The Nationalist 
journals of every shade of thought were violent in denunci- 
ation of the "judicial murder," and there can be no doubt 
that, at best, the execution was a very great blunder. The 
initials A. L. O'B. are to-day a power to conjure up the 
forces of disaffection in Ireland, and the ballad, "God 
save Ireland," written by Mr. T. D. Sullivan in com- 
memoration of their death, has been accepted as the 
national anthem of disaffected Ireland. 

Before the close of 1867, a Fenian outrage of a very 
different character was to electrify society; on December 
13th, a Fenian named Barret placed a barrel of gunpowder 
close to the outer wall of Clerkenwell gaol, and fired it, 
with the intention of helping a comrade who was within 
to escape. The most terrible consequences ensued. One 
man was killed on the spot; three died from their wounds; 
forty women were prematurely confined, and hventy of the 
babes died at their birth; two women went mad, and 120 
persons were injured. The stupidity of the crime is the 
only palliation of its atrocity; had Barret possessed the 
faintest knowledge of the material he was using, he must 
have known that, had his comrade been near, he, instead 
of being rescued, must inevitably have been blown to atoms. 
The Clerkenwell outrage did more than any measures of 
government to weaken the Fenian organization. The 
deed, dastardly as it was, was obviously an imitation of 
the Manchester rescue; a terrible instance of the results of 
lawless example, and many an honest patriot who had 
joined the Fenians withdrew from them, seeing with what 
manner of men those who join secret societies throw in 
their lot. Another and unexpected result of the Clerken- 
well outrage was that it riveted the attention of English 
statesmen on Ireland, and convinced them that something 
must be done for the pacification of the country. 



172 IRISH HISTORY FOR EXGEISH READERS. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

LOPPING THE UPAS TREE. 

"There are," said Mr. Gladstone* "three branches xo 
the Irish upas tree; the Established Church, the system of 
land tenure, and the system of national education.'' The 
speech is instinct with the spirit of reform, and indeed, 
while the Fenian movement was agitating Ireland, and 
filling a large section of the community with vague alarms, 
the government were considering .what steps should be 
taken for the pacification of the country. The condition 
of the Established Church in Ireland was an abnse which 
called loudly for reformation, and motions for its reform 
were continually brought before the house. The Church 
Temporalities Act, passed in 1833, had in a measure re- 
duced the expenses of the Establishment, and the Tithe 
Commutation Act of 1838 had divested the parson of his 
hated character of tithe-proctor, and averted the downfall 
of the Establishment. It may be doubted whether the 
tenantry reaped any money advantage from either the tithe 
commutation or the disestablishment; rents Avere raised to 
include the tithe, and were not lowered again after the dis- 
establishment, but the State support of a Church which 
had failed so signally in its mission was a very grave abuse. 
In March, 1805, Mr* Dillwyn moved : "That in the opinion 
of this house the present position of the Irish Church 
Establishment is unsatisfactory, and calls for the early at- 
tention of her majesty's government." The home secre- 
tary, Sir George Grey, stated that no practical grievauce 
existed; and Mr. Gladstone, without attempting to defend 
the Establishment on its merits, declared that he did not 
think the time for parliamentary action had arrived. The 
debate was finally adjourned and never resumed, and in tin: 
next year. Sir John Gray revived the subject with a like 



LOPPIXG THE UPAS TREE. 173 

result. In 180; it was again brought forward, and finally 
in 1868 Mr. Gladstone pronounced that, '*in order to the 
settlement of the question of the Irish Church, that Church 
as a State Church, must cease to exist." No other Church 
in the world's history ever occupied such a position as did 
the Established Church in Ireland. "There is nothing 
like it," said Sydney Smith, "in Europe, in Asia, in the 
discovered part of Africa, or in all we have heard of Tim- 
buctoo." "The most utterly absurd and indefensible of 
all the institutions in the civilized world," said Macau lav; 
while Brougham and Grey stigmatized it as "the foulest 
practical abuse that ever existed," and "opposed alike to 
justice, to policy, and to religious principles." 

Keformecl by the Tudors, the Established Church was en- 
riched by James I. from the confiscated lands of the Irish 
chiefs, and as time went on the Church property was in- 
creased from various sources, and by the payment of tithes 
which had never been exacted in Ireland by the Roman 
Church. But though she increased in wealth, the Angli- 
can Church failed signally in her mission. At the accession 
of James I. not sixty native Irish had embraced the Angli- 
can faith, but after the civil war of 1641 and the planta- 
tion of Cromwell, the Protestants of all denominations were 
as 45 to 120 Catholics. The penal code had a further 
reforming influence, and between 1730 and 1784 the Pro- 
testants of all denominations were as 60 to 120, but at the 
beginning of the present century they were only 40 to 120; 
and the census of 1861 shows that there were then only 30 
Protestants to 120 Catholics, a lower percentage than there 
had been since the protectorate, and in 1866 the members 
of the Established Church were only ten per cent, of the 
entire population. In the ten years following the disestab- 
lishment the number of Anglicans rose to twelve per cent. 
In many parishes there was not a single Anglican. "I 
myself," said Mr. George Henry Moore in 1849, "pay tithe 
in ten parishes; in the whole of these parishes there is not 
one church, one glebe, or one single resident clergyman. 
I am not aware that there is one single Protestant in the 
whole eight parishes, and I do not believe that divine service 
according to the Protestant ritual has been celebrated in 



174 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

them since the Reformation." In Limerick diocese there 
were in 1860 twenty-two parishes with no Anglican, and 
only three parishes claimed fifteen members of the Estab- 
lished Church. The diocese of Dublin, "the capital of the 
Pale," contained nineteen parishes with no Anglican resi- 
dent, and only one parish attained the number of twenty- 
five; and there were in Ireland 199 parishes which did not 
contain one single member of the Irish Church. Yet all 
these parishes paid tithe. The annual income of the Irish 
Church was £600,000, and of this £400,000 consisted of 
tithe. Such a church had surely forfeited her right to be 
called the National Church of Ireland, and to the support 
of the Irish nation. 

On the 23d of March Mr. Gladstone moved that the Es- 
tablished Church of Ireland should cease to exist as an 
Establishment, and on the 16th of June the bill was read 
for the third time in the Commons, but a fortnight later 
it was thrown out by the Lords. 

In the following November a general election was held, 
the first under the new Reform Act, which granted house- 
hold suffrage to the boroughs of Great Britain, and lowered 
the borough qualification in Ireland to £4. Not for years 
had there been an election of such great importance; it was 
a struggle between Liberal and Tory, not merely a question 
of the disestablishment of the Irish Church. The Liberals 
were returned with a great majority, and Mr. Gladstone 
became premier On the first of March he introduced his 
bill to disestablish and disendow the Irish Church, and to 
deprive the Presbyterian Church of the Regium Donuni 
(the grant made to that body by William III., and amount- 
ing to £45,000), and to deprive Maynooth College of the 
government grant of £26,000, due regard being had to 
vested interests. The total value of the Church property 
and of these grants amounted to £16,000,000, and of this 
sum £10,840,000 was given back to the Church, the sur- 
plus being reserved to be applied in the main to the relief 
of unavoidable calamity in Ireland. The bill did not pass 
without a struggle; no one attempted to prove that the 
Church was the Church of the Irish nation, but the dises- 
tablishment was denounced as an act of sacrilege, of con- 



LOPPING THE UPAS TREE. ITS 

fiscation, and as a direct violation of the fifth irtiele of 
union. But on the 26th of July, 1869, the bill received 
the royal assent, and on January 1st, 1871, it came into 
operation. 

Having felled the first branch of the upas tree, Mr. Glad- 
stone directed his attention to the second. The Land Act 
of 1860, which secured for the tenant the value of all im- 
provements made with the consent of the landlord had been 
pronounced, "an invitation to the landlord to dissent," and 
all parties agreed that it had failed. A new scheme had 
been brought forward by the government six years later, 
but they abandoned it, and in '67 the Tories had introduced 
a measure proposing to appoint a "commissioner of improve- 
ment," who should decide between the landlord and the 
tenant. But both landlord and tenant had opposed the meas- 
ure and it fell through. 

In 1870 Mr. Gladstone brought in that Land Act which 
was intended (1) to legalize the Ulster custom of selling 
the tenant right and all customs analogous to it outside 
Ulster; (2) to secure for the evicted tenant compensation 
for his improvements, and in certain cases for disturbance; 
and (3) to promote the establishment of a peasant proprie- 
torship. Unfortunately the bill afforded no security against 
eviction or the arbitrary raising of rents, and the tenants 
were legally able to contract themselves out of the benefits 
of the act, and by the threat of eviction the landlord could 
coerce them into signing almost any contract he chose to 
force upon them. Its effect upon eviction was nil, for 
during the three years before the act was passed there were 
4,253 ejectments, and in the three years following 5,641, and 
in the three subsequent years the number rose to 8,438; and 
in the yeirs '79 to '82 there were over ten thousand evic- 
tions. The cause for legalizing the sale of tenant right 
and establishing a peasant proprietorship fared little better; 
indeed, owing to the determined opposition of the land- 
lords, the bill broke down utterly, though, when it was 
passed, it was regarded as a final settlement of the Irish 
land difficulty. 

The question of national education seems at first sight 
a much simpler one than either disestablishment or the 



176 TRTSH HISTORY FOR EXGLISH READERS. 

passing of such a Land Bill as that of 1870, yet this third 
branch of the upas tree proved tougher than either of the 
others, and the effort to hew it down upset the Gladstone 
ministry. The condition of intermediate and higher edu- 
ction in Ireland was scandalous; the proportion of Irish 
hoys learning dead or living languages was as two to ten or 
fifteen in England, and what was worse, the tendency was 
bac kward instead of forward, for the number of secondary 
schools fell between '61 and '71 from 729 to 574. 

The system of primary education established by Mr. Stan- 
ley (afterwards Lord Derby) in 1831 had in great measure 
provided for the education of the children of the poor, but 
though the Anglicans had their university and endowed in- 
termediate schools, nothing had been done for the Catholics 
till 1845. In that year Sir Eobert Peel had passed a meas- 
ure for the creation of three colleges where no denomina- 
tional instruction was to be given. These were called the 
Queen's Colleges, and were established at Cork, Belfast, 
and Gal way, and five years later a university in connection 
with them was chartered and endowed by the state. At 
first the proposal had been fairly well received, but in the 
very year of their foundation, O'Connell bestowed on them 
the nickname of "The Godless Colleges/' and in 1851 the 
Catholic hierarchy condemned the system. Three years 
later, a Catholic University was founded under the presi- 
dency of Dr. Newman, and though, as it was unchartered, 
it had no legal power of conferring degrees in arts or laws, 
it was well attended and supported by public subscription. 
This was the condition of education in Ireland, when, in 
1868, Mr. Gladstone became prime minister. In that year, 
and the next, and again in 1870, Mr. Fawcett brought for- 
ward a measure for abolishing all tests in Trinity College, 
and finally in 1873, all tests were abolished. But this con- 
cession did not satisfy the Catholics, who demanded a 
chartered and endowed Catholic University. This was re- 
fused, on the ground that it would lower the national 
standard of education, but as a compromise Mr. Gladstone, 
in February 13th, 1873, brought in a bill for the abolition 
of Queen's University and Dublin University, and the 
creation of one central university, to which Trinity College, 



LOPPIXG THE UPAS TREE. 177 

the Catholic University, and other Catholic colleges, and 
the Queen's Colleges at Belfast and Cork were to be affili- 
ated. Galway Queen's College had collapsed and was to be 
abandoned. r riie new foundation was to include no pro- 
fessorial chairs in theology, moral philosophy, or modern 
history, and a part of the endowments of Trinity College 
was to be devoted to its support. The proposal satisfied 
neither Catholics, Anglicans, nor dissenters; and, indeed, 
a system of education which excluded modern history, 
moral philosophy and theology, must have been so deficient 
as to diminish the value of degrees. The bill was thrown 
out on second reading by a majority of 287 to 284 and 
the Liberal administration was practically overthrown. 

The ministers resigned, but Mr. Disraeli declined to ac- 
cept office with the existing House of Commons, and the 
Liberals remained in office till the following January, 
when Mr. Gladstone dissolved parliament. The Conserv- 
atives were then returned by a large majority. We may 
anticipate matters a little by saying that in 1878 Mr. Dis- 
raeli secured £1,000,000 of the surplus fund of the dises- 
tablished Church for the benefit of intermediate education 
in Ireland, and in 1879 he introduced and passed a measure 
abolishing Queen's University and establishing an Ex- 
amining Board, with power to confer degrees on approved 
candidates from any place of education. The Senate of 
the new establishment was also empowered to create exhibi- 
tions, prizes, scholarships, and fellowships, for which the 
funds were to be supplied by parliament. The foundation 
of the "'Royal University" is the most recent educational 
measure passed for Ireland. In 1882 1,688 and in 1883 
2,095 persons passed through its examinations. But the 
institution of an Examining Board has not supplied the 
need for a Catholic University, and it is probable that the 
last word has yet to be spoken on the subject of education 
in Ireland. 



12 



178 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT. 

While the Land Acj; of 1870 was still being debated in 
the Commons, a meeting of Irishmen of various creeds and 
shades of political opinion was held in Dublin, for the pur- 
pose of forming an organization to promote the cause of 
local self-government for Ireland. The disestablishment 
of the Irish Church had removed one of the great objec- 
tions of Irish Anglicans to repeal of the union, and so it 
came that many members of "The Home Rule League" 
were Protestants, and Isaac Butt, a Protestant barrister, 
became their leader. The movement took hold and in- 
creased in popularity, and at the general election of 1874 
fifty-one Home Rule members were returned to the imperial 
parliament, under the leadership of Mr. Butt. The de- 
mand of the Home Rule members was very simple; they 
asked for a local government for local affairs, bearing the 
same relation to the imperial parliament at Westminister 
that the senate of each state of the American Union bears 
to the congress at Washington. The party, however, under 
the leadershship of Mr. Butt, did not agitate very actively 
for repeal; once a year they brought forward a Home Rule 
motion, and once a year they were out-voted, and their en- 
ergies were chiefly concentrated on the land question. 
Already in 1871, it had been found that the Land Bill had 
failed to legalize the Ulster custom, and a short act had 
been introduced by lord Cairns, providing that in the case 
of any proceedings in the Landed Estates Court the rights 
of the tenants under the act of 1870 should remain valid, 
even in cases where they were not specified or referred to 
in the conveyance,. The next move came from the land- 
lord party. In J 872 viscount Lifford appealed against the 
judgment of the Land Court. His appeal was dismissed, 



THE TTOME RULE MOVEMENT. 179 

and he subsequently moved for a committee to inquire into 
the working of the bill. The committee deliberated, but 
no change was made in the working of the act. This brings 
us down to the general election of 1874. In the following- 
year Mr. Sharman Crawford, son of Mr. Sharman Crawford 
of tenant-right celebrity, stated, on behalf of the Ulster 
farmers, that since the passing of the act attempts to de- 
stroy the right of free sale had been made by the northern 
landlords, who had drawn up new office rules and made 
new agreements, which utterly destroyed the tenant-right 
and the advantages obtained by the Land Act. As the law 
then stood, the onus of proof in cases of disputed tenant- 
right rested with the tenant. He had prima facie to show 
that the right of selling the goodwill existed on the estate 
in question; and by his amendment, Mr. Crawford proposed 
to shift the onus of proof to the landlord. The bill was 
opposed* by the government, and thrown out by a majority 
of two to one. 

The tenants of the south now took up the agitation, and 
as their representative, Mr. Butt brought in a bill, on the 
lines now familiar as the "Three F's. " On behalf of this 
measuure, Mr. Butt remarked that the Irish land question 
could be settled only by measures giving the tenant security 
of tenure, and that to effect this the landlord must be de- 
prived of the power of arbitrary eviction. "I propose, ' ■ he 
continued, "that every tenant shall have permission to claim 
from the chairman of his county the benefit of his improve- 
ments, and if he does that, I propose that a certificate shall 
be given him protecting him against eviction. That will, 
in point of time, establish a perpetuity of tenure. The 
great difficulty in anything of this kind is to get a tribunal 
which will fairly value the land. I confess it is a difficulty 
which I have found very hard to meet. The idea of a 
valued rent seems to be getting largely hold of some of the 
landlords, and I see that some of them suggest the valua- 
tion should be fixed by a government valuer. ... It 
is, however, the most difficult thing in the world to find a 
tribunal to which you can entrust this task. I therefore 
propose, by this bill, that the landlord and tenant should 
each select one arbitrator, and the two arbitrators thus ap- 



180 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

pointed shall agree on a third. In cases where the landlord 
should not appear, I suggest that the rent should be assessed 
by a jury composed of three special and three common 
jurors." These, Mr. Butt said, were the main provisions 
of the bill by which he sought to secure for the tenant 
fixity of tenure, fair rent, and free sale of tenant right; and 
it was upon a modification of these lines that the Land 
Act of 1881 was drawn up, but in '76 the bill was rejected 
by 290 against 56. 

In the preceding year, at the death of Mr. John Martin, 
a new and very important figure had appeared on the polit- 
ical stage. After the conviction of Mitchel for treason- 
felony in '18, John Martin had published and edited a se- 
ditious newspaper called The Irish Felon. In his turn, 
Martin, too, had been convicted, but had been releasd in '54. 
Four years later he had returned to Ireland, and in '71 
had been elected member for Meath. At the general elec- 
tion, three years later, he was re-elected, but in March, '7*5, 
he died, and was succeeded by Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell. 
At first Mr. Parnell attracted little attention in the House 
of Commons, but in '77 he led a little band of advanced 
Home Rulers, who, by a system of ingenious obstruction, 
tried to prevent the introduction of government measures 
at late hours of the night. In the meanwhile, the annual 
Home Rule debate still expressed the protesting acquies- 
cence of the Irish nation in the union, and Mr. Crawford 
yearly introduced his amendment to the Land Bill, but on 
each occasion it was withdrawn, out-voted, or talked out. 
Mr. Butt's programme of the "Three F's" commanded 
a little more attention; it was brought forward again in 
'78, and thrown out on the second reading, and immedi- 
ately after Mr. Butt's death in May, '79, Mr. Shaw, who 
succeeded him as Home Rule leader, brought it for the 
last time before the notice of the house. 

It was imperative that something should be done for the 
rural population of Ireland. The two preceding summers 
had been disastrously cold and wet- the crops had not rip- 
ened either in England or Ireland, and even the better 
class of farmers were terribly pinched, in '77 the potatoe 
crop alone had fallen from £12,400,000 to £5,200,000, and 



THE HOME RULE MOVEMENT. 181 

in '78 it fell to £3,000,000, During the session the subject 
of Irish distress was frequently brought before the house, 
and in May Mr. O'Connor Power warned the house that 
"if parliament did not come forward within a reasonable 
time with some measure calculated to relieve the depres- 
sion of the present state of agriculture in Ireland, scenes 
would arise in Ireland that would be far more dangerous to 
the rights of property, and to the order and tranquility 
which should prevail in that country, than any that Ire- 
land had been afflicted with in her long struggle with the 
ignorance if not the incompetency of the English parlia- 
ment/' and at the same time Mr. Parnell announced that 
the land question ''was one which would have to be taken 
up by the Irish members in a firm and determined man- 
ner. " 

On the whole, parliament was disposed to take little 
notice of these representations of the distress in Ireland, 
which were regarded by the government, and by Mr. James 
Lowther, the Irish secretary, in particular, as a dishonest 
attempt to fan the flames of the Home Rule agitation. 
But the statement of Sir Stafford Xorthcote that the total 
value of the jmncipal crop, which in the bad season of '78 
had been £32,758,000, had further decreased to £22,743, 
000, revealed the truth of the Home Rule representations. 
Meanwhile, the number of evictions for non-payment of 
rent was increasing rapidly, and the peasantry were resist- 
ing them with their old weapons of Whiteboyism and out- 
rage As early as April, '78, the Times had declared that 
there Avas "a reign of terror on the borders of Mayo. Gal- 
way, and Roscommon." Since then another bad eeason 
had brought an increase of distress both in England and 
Ireland. The bad seasons afflicted English landlords and 
tenants. All over the country the farmers were declaring 
themselves unable to pay, and the landlords offered abate- 
ments, and in many cases forewent their rents altogether. 
It Avas impossible to the English farmer to pay, and it Avas 
doubly so to the Irish small peasant farmer. Yet many of 
the large absentee landlords demanded their rents, and 
ejected those avIio were unable to pay them; and in June, 
1879, Mr. Parnell and Mr. O'Connor Power began a no- 



1S'2 IRISH HISTORY FUR ENGLISH READERS. 

rent agitation in Mayo. Mr. Pufnell, who had begun as a 
disciple of the "Three F's," had now adopted a more ad- 
vanced programme. The principle of the "Three FV 
would work well enough in seasons of good or average har- 
vest, but in case of a continuance of bad years it afforded 
no protection to the tenant, who would be unable to pay 
what was in ordinary times a fair rent, and who, from the 
temporary depreciation in the value of land, would in such 
seasons get little or nothing for his privilege of free sale of 
the tenant-right. In seasons of distress there are but two 
securities for the farmer: the one, a landlord who regarded 
his tenantry as working partners in a business in which he 
himself is capitalist and sleeping partner, and, as such, 
liable to bear his share of the loss occasioned by trade de- 
pression; the other, that the cultivator should be the own- 
er of the soil. Mr. Parnell adopted the latter as the solu- 
tion of the land problem. 

Meanwhile, an inevitable breach had grown up between 
the two sections of Home Rulers. The anger of the Irish 
Anglicans at the disestablishment of the Church had cooled 
down, and the moderate Home Ruler of 1870 was more 
moderate than he had been eight years ago; while the ad- 
vanced party, perceiving that the policy of Mr. Butt and 
Mr. Shaw had done nothing to advance their cause, resolved 
on a more active policy, and a series of meetings were an- 
nounced to promote the cause of Home Rule. The first 
of these was held at Limerick on the last day of August, 
and throughout September and October Sunday meetings 
were held in various parts of the country; and at the end 
of the latter month the Irish National Land League came 
very quietly and unobtrusively into existence. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE LAND LEAGUE. 

Djrixg the autumn of ? 79, Mr. Parnell became the 
accepted leader of the Irish parliamentary party, and as 
such he was chosen president of the Land League, but the 



THE LAND LEAIU'E. 183 

idea of such a league had originated with the ex-Fenians 
''The Fenians/' wrote John Devoy in the August of 'TO, 
"saw only a green flag, but the men of to-day have discov- 
ered that there is such a thing as the land/' and it was 
with Devoy and Michael Davitt, a released Fenian convict, 
that the idea of a Land League originated. All through 
the summer of '79, the Home Rule party and Mr. Davit t 
had been holding separate land meetings, but eventually 
they combined. To every man, no matter what his views, 
it was clear that something must be done for the settle- 
ment of the land question, and Mr. Parnell was as con- 
vinced as Mr. Davitt of the impossibility of an adjustment 
between the landlords and tenants. "One of them must 
go," he said some months later," and it is easier to remove 
the few than the many." He saw, moreover, that the ne- 
cessity of protecting the interest of the landlord class would 
prevent the English government granting Home Rule so 
long as that class existed as a class; it seemed to him that, 
the land difficulty once settled, the chief obstacle to Home 
Rule would be removed. In the meantime the distress 
increased; a wet summer had been followed by a wet au- 
tumn; starvation was very near; there was neither money 
nor food, and funds for the relief of distress were estab- 
lished in Dublin by the duchess of Marlborough, wife of 
the lord lieutenant, and by the lord mayor; and in New 
York by Mr. Bennett of the New York Herald. 

The tenants on many estates were dependent for their 
daily food on these charities, yet some of the largest land- 
lords exacted their rent, and evicted those who could not 
pay it. The Land League organized a combination to resist 
the payment of any rent higher than the tenants felt them- 
selves justly able to pay while the famine continued, and 
on the 19th of November, Mr. Davitt and two others were 
arrested for seditious speeches made at a Land League 
meeting seventeen days earlier. But the great meeting of 
the year was one convened at Balla, in Mayo, in connection 
with an eviction. The meeting was organized into a na- 
tional protest aginst famine ejectments, and thousands of 
people assembled from all parts of the country. The police 
assembled to do their work, and the multitude, quivering 



184 IRISH HISTORY FOR EXGLISH READERS. 

with indignation and excitement, awaited in the bitter 
cold the appearance of the evicting officer. Had lie come 
among the people, whose passions were roused, none can 
tell what might have, happened. Happily he did not 
appear, and the only incident of the Balla meeting was an 
impassioned address from Mr. Brennan to the Irish con- 
stabulary, entreating them to remember that they and the 
tenantry were united by ties of class, and often of blood, 
and which resulted in lodging Mr. Brennan in gaol. 

The Land League once fairly started, Mr. Parnell re- 
solved on a tour, political and charitable, through the 
States of America, and accordingly, toward the close of 
December, he and Mr. John Dillon started as emissaries of 
the Land League. The absence of these gentlemen in 
America, of the parliamentary party in London, and the 
imprisonment of Mr. Davitt and others, had a damping 
effect on the agitation, and while the Irish members were 
engaged on the Relief of Distress Bill in Westminister, the 
evictions were being gone on with and resisted in the old 
manner. But there was at this time much more threaten- 
ing than outrage, and though there had been four thous- 
and evictions in '79, Mr. Gladstone was able, at the end of 
March, 1880, to congratulate the country on its freedom 
from outrage. But order was maintained by force, and in the 
six first months of '80 three thousand three hundred police 
and one hundred and seven officers were employed in pro- 
tecting process servers in the west riding of Galway alone. 
On the 8th March lord Beaconsfield announced his in- 
tention of appealing to the country, and prominent among 
the causes which induced him to do so was the condition 
of Ireland. In his final official letter he vehemently de- 
nounced the Home Rule party, and in consequence of this 
denunciation the Irish vote in England was given exclus- 
ively to the Liberals. The result of the election was a 
Liberal triumph: the Conservatives who, at the last elec- 
tion, had mustered 351, now returned only 243 members, 
and the Liberals gained 99 seats, their number rising from 
250 to 349. The Home Rulers gained nine seats, and 
numbered 00 in the new parliament. At this change of 
government the hopes of the Irish party ran high'. The 



THE LAND LEAUUE. 185 

Liberals were known to be in favor of remedial legislation; 
the Peace Preservation Act was allowed to lapse,, and Mr. 
W. E. Forster. who had always interested himself in the 
condition of Ireland, and had played a noble part in the 
Quaker commission during the famine of '49, was ap- 
pointed chief secretary. 

On the opening of the new parliament the Irish mem- 
bers called for immediate legislation on the land question, 
but Mr. Forster, while admitting the necessity, affirmed 
that there was no time to deal with the matter during that 
session. The Irish members then moved for an interim 
bill to stop evictions until the promised Land Bill should 
be passed. This was refused, but as a soothing measure a 
Compensation for Disturbance clause was added to the 
Relief of Distress Bill. This Compensation for Disturbance 
Act authorized county court judges in Ireland to allow 
compensation to tenants evicted for non-payment of rent 
in cases where the bad seasons could be proved to be the 
cause of their insolvency. The bill did nothing to pro- 
hibit evictions, and therefore did not satisfy the wishes of 
the Irish party; still, such as it was, they accepted it 
thankfully. But in England the bill met with the most 
violent opposition, and when the Lords rejected it by a 
majority of 203 the government did not move further in 
the matter. The number of evictions ran up quickly; the 
landlords fearing some kind of prohibitory clauses in the 
expected Land Bill made the most of the little time that 
remained to them; the Land Leaguers begged for some 
kind of legislation to check the evictions, but none was 
given, and the distress and disturbance increased. The 
news of the rejection of the bill produced something like 
revolt in Ireland; there were riots at evictions; "land 
grabbers" (tenants who had taken the farms of evicted 
occupiers) were attacked, their ricks burned and their 
cattle maimed; in a word, the peasantry were once more 
having recourse to their old weapon of Whiteboyism. The 
speeches of the leaders, too, grew much more violent, the 
people were advised to resist eviction and excessive rents, 
and to punish eviction and land grabbing by the process 
now familiar as "boycotting." This terrible weapon was 



186 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

not a Land League manufacture: it is the principle of all 
exclusive dealing and, in a modified form, has been used 
in all ages. In justice to the Land League leaders, it 
must also be admitted that they did not advocate boycott- 
ing until the government, by refusing to step in and stop 
evictions, had thrown the. people back on their own re- 
sources; and till the peasanty, seeing nothing but outrage 
to defend them from that sentence of eviction which Mr. 
Gladstone himself declared to be equivalent to a sentence 
of death, had once more taken up their old weapon. The 
number of outrages, and in especial the brutal maim- 
ing of cattle increased, and it was at this juncture that 
Mr. Parnell, in the celebrated Ennis speech, first recom- 
mended boycotting — "If yoxi refuse to pay unjust rents, 
if you refuse to take farms from which others have been 
evicted, the land question must be settled, and settled in 
a way that will be satisfactory to you. Now, what are you 
to do to a tenant who bids for a farm from which another has 
been evicted? You must shun him on the roadside when 
you meet him — you must shun him in the shop — you 
must shun him in the fair green, and in the market place, 
and in the place of worship; by leaving him severely 
alone, by putting him in a moral Coventry; by isolating 
him from the rest of his countrymen as if he were the 
leper of old, you must show him your detestation of the 
crime he has committed." 

Three days later this sentence was put into execution 
against the agent of lord Erne, Captain Boycott, who had 
refused the rent offered by the tenants, and had issued eject- 
ment processes. On September 22d, the process server went 
forth, but he was forced by the tenantry to retreat, and on 
the next day Captain Boycott "was left severely alone." 
Not a stable boy, not a maid servant, not a harvester would 
remain in his service — not a shopkeeper would sell to him, 
nor a laundress wash for him; his isolation was complete, 
and meanwhile his crops stood high and white, and un- 
gathered. In his necessity the Ulster Orangemen took 
pity on him, and eventually fifty men under an escort of 
7,000 military and police saved the crops at a government 
cost of Is. for every pound of potatoes and every turnip 



THE LAXI) LEAGUE. 187 

tlifeiC was saved; and the harvest over, Captain Boycott and 
his men went off to Dublin. The affair caused an enor- 
mous sensation, the more so because Captain Boycott had 
always been well liked; and indeed he must have under- 
stood that the resentment was not against his person but 
his action, for he has long since gone back to Lough 
Mask, and regained his popularity. The success of the 
experiment encouraged the Leaguers to boycott Mr. Bence 
Jones, and after this time boycotting became the great in- 
strument of the Land League. But the hopes of its 
founders that it would, supersede agrarian crime were 
falsified, for while Captain Boycott was isolated, Lord 
Mountmorres was shot dead; and though the total num- 
ber of murders throughout the year was only five or six, 
there was an enormous increase of such outrages as hough- 
ing cattle and sending threatening letters; indeed, though 
the outrages were milder in their nature than in previous 
outbreaks, the number was enormously greater than in any 
preceding year, and by December it was known that Mr. 
Forster had become an advocate of coercion. 

There were no two opinions as to the disturbed state of 
the country; but while the Land Leaguers attributed the 
disorganization to distress and evictions, the government 
set down the disorder to the score of the Land League, and 
in December the principal officials of the League were in- 
dicted on a charge of conspiracy to prevent the payment of 
rents. The trial, which lasted nineteen days, ended in 
the disagreement of the jury, two being for a conviction 
and ten for an acquittal; and at the meeting of parliament 
in January, 1881, Mr. Forster demanded exceptional legis- 
lation, as the administration of the law had utterly broken 
down, and government accordingly signified their intention 
of passing the Coercion Bill before dealing with the land 
question. The Coercion Bill was a stringent one. It em- 
powered the Irish government to arrest and imprison, 
without trial, and for no specified period, any person 
reasonably suspected of treason, treason-felony, or the com- 
mission of crimes of intimidation, or incitement thereto. 
The act was also retrospective in its action, so that any 
person who had in the past incited to non-payment of 



188 j kisif history for exglish readers. 

rent, or boycotting, would be liable to its action. It was 
to be accompanied by an Arms Bill. But it was less the 
Coercion Act itself than the fact that it obtained priority 
over the Land Act that incensed the Irish members. 
There were 40,000 families in Ireland liable to eviction, 
and if nothing was done to prevent the ejectment of these 
persons, remedial legislation late in the year would be of 
little use. The increase in outrages, argued the Land 
Leaguers, is due, not to the influence of the League, but 
to the fact that the harvest has been reaped, and the peo- 
ple, in their desperate necessity, are determined to keep it. 
To the charge that the League might have checked the 
number of outrages, the Leaguers answered, with some 
show of reason, that if government, with 25,000 soldiers and 
14,000 police, had failed to do so, it was not in a position 
to twit the Land League with a similar failure. With 
regard to the houghing of cattle, the Leaguers represented 
that this abominable outrage had been practiced for cen- 
turies, and against this, night visiting, and the cowardly 
practice of sending threatening letters, the League had 
exerted its influence to the utmost, and the organization 
claimed for itself that it had in a measure superseded 
them by the system of boycotting. The real aim of the 
Coercion Act, said the Land Leaguers, is not to put down 
outrages, but to destroy the power of the League, and the 
League, and the League only, has kept the roof -tree over 
many families. The action of the organization has made 
evictions almost impossible west of the Shannon, and it is 
only by staying evictions that order can be maintained in 
Ireland. If the Coercion Act succeeds in breaking the 
power of the League, the effect will be, not to decrease the 
number of outrages, but to increase them tenfold. The 
position of the government is, said the Land Leaguers, 
untenable. Mr. Forster himself had admitted in the pre- 
ceding spring that evictions, even for the non-payment of 
rent, must not be left to the discretion of the landlords, 
and Mr. Gladstone had said that a sentence of eviction was 
equivalent to a sentence of death. The Compensation for 
Disturbance Bill had been an acknowledgment that, in the 
opinion of government, the tenants needed protection, and 



THE LAND LEAGUE. 189 

now, instead of granting them that protection, the govern- 
ment is attempting to destroy the very organization which 
alone has protected the tenants from wholesale evictions. 
Let the government pass an act preventing evictions, and 
there will be no need of coercion; let them reform the land 
laws, and the Land League will cease to exist. Had the 
bill been aimed, not against the League, but against crime, 
the leaders declared they would have met it in a different 
spirit; but as matters were, they would feel it their duty 
to resist the measure to the utmost. What guarantee had 
they that the proposed Land Bill would be such as they could 
accept; and, even if it met their views, who could say that 
it might not meet with the fate of the Compensation for 
Disturbance Bill? 

But if the Irish members felt it their duty to oppose the 
bill, English members on both sides of the house were no 
less convinced of the necessity of going on with the measure, 
and each stage was fought out with intense resistance and 
bitterness. The obstruction of the Irish members was such 
that the debate on the address had lasted eleven nights; the 
debate on the first reading of the bill occupied five nights, 
and was only closed by the coup d' Stat of the Speaker, 
who, after a sitting of forty-one hours, declined to call upon 
any more members to speak, and called on the house to 
decide at once on the first reading. But the back of the 
obstruction was not broken. The debate on the second 
reading occupied four nights; the bill took ten nights 
to pass through committee, and the third reading occu- 
pied two. It finally passed the Commons on Febru- 
ary 25th, and on March 2d received the royal assent. 
Directly the Coercion Act left the Commons, government 
introduced an Arms Bill, but this went through its stages 
more rapidly, and became law soon after the Coercion Act. 
, In the meantime the excitement was increasing in Ire- 
land; Michael Davitt had been arrested early in February 
for infringing the conditions of his ticket-of -leave, and 
soon afterward the Ladies' Land League sprang into 
existence. As soon as the Coercion Acts were passed, Mr. 
John Dillon returned to Ireland, and continued his work 
of speech-making and Land League organizing, precisely 



100 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

as though there were no Coercion Act in existence. 
Early in May he was arrested and imprisoned, and about 
the same time Father Eugene Sheehy, of Kilmallock, was 
also arrested, but with these exceptions the government 
attacked the less important men. Early in April the 
promised Land Bill was brought in, and as its provisions 
will occupy a separate chapter, I shall merely state here 
that it became law on August 22d. The business of the 
session was now over, and the Irish leaders returned to 
Ireland to begin an autumn campaign, for the Land Bill, 
drawn up on the lines of the "Three F's," did not satisfy 
Mr. ParnelPs views. The country was far more disorgan- 
ized than during the preceding autumn; the Coercion Act 
had as yet failed to pacify the country. In August Mr. 
Dillon was released, as his life was endangered by the close 
confinement; a few weeks later Father Sheehy was also 
liberated. For a time it seemed as though the government 
intended abandoning the Coercion Act, but in the begin- 
ning of October Mr. Gladstone at Leeds made a hot attack 
on Mr. Parnell, and on the 13th Mr. Parnell, Mr. Dillon, 
Mr. Sexton, Mr. O'Kelly, Mr. William O'Brien and Mr. 
Quinn were arrested and taken to Kilmainham Gaol. 
Arrest followed arrest, the less important men were con- 
veyed to gaol in batches, and a few days later the impris- 
oned leaders issued a manifesto calling on the people to 
retaliate on the government by paying no rent while the 
leaders were imprisoned. That was the death-blow of the 
Land League; the mandate was not obeyed, and was 
universally condemned by the clergy. But to the govern- 
ment the manifesto was an unmixed boon, for it justified 
them in proclaiming the Land League as an illegal society. 
Thus was the organization crushed, and government having 
made a clean sweep of the leaders, set to the task of re-es- 
tablishing law and order in Ireland. 



THE LAND ACT. 191 



CHAPTEE XXXVII. 

THE LAND ACT. 

When the general election of 1880 brought the Liberals 
into power, the failure of the Land Bill of 1870 had long 
been an acknowledged fact, and one of the first acts of the 
new government was to appoint a royal commission to in- 
quire into the working of the Land Act. The report of 
the commission was to the effect that the Land Bill had 
failed to effect any reform in the system of land tenure; 
it had not checked the unreasonable increase of rent, nor 
lessened evictions; and by a rise of rent immediately be- 
fore a sale, the landlord had been able to render the tenant 
right worthless. "Some landlords," wrote the commis- 
sioners, "who previously were content to take low rents, 
appear to have began a system of rack-renting when the 
Land Act was .passed, either because they judged that 
their former forbearance was not suitable to the new rela- 
tions which legislation had established between themselves 
and their tenants, or because the profits of agriculture 
were just then high, or because the high price fetched by 
the tenant right, under the stimulus of the satisfaction 
engendered by the passing of the act, made them think 
that they had hitherto been mistaken in letting the lands 
so cheaply. . . . On some estates, and particularly on 
some recently acquired, rents have been increased, both 
before and since the Land Act, to an extensive degree, 
not only as compared with the value of the land, but so as 
to absorb the tenant's own improvements. A thorough 
and very general change," continued the report, "in the 
system of land tenure is imperatively required — such a 
change as shall bring home to the tenants a sense of secur- 
ity, shall guard them against undue increase of rent, and 
.shall render them no longer liable to the apprehension of 



192 IKTSH HISTORY FOR EXGLISH READERS. 

arbitrary disturbance, and shall give them full security for 
their improvements." This was, in fact, a recommenda- 
tion to the government to take up Mr. Butt's rejected 
programme of the " Three F's," and to grant what the 
tenants had demanded ten years earlier. The Land Bill 
of '70 had reserved to the landlord the power to fix and 
raise rents at his own discretion, to evict his tenants under 
any circumstances, subject to a fine for arbitrary disturb- 
ance, and to absorb the tenants' improvements by paying 
damages for so doing. The fundamental principle of the 
Land Act of 1881 was the creation of a Land Court by 
which all disputes between landlord and tenant might be 
decided. Appeal to this court was to be optional; any tenant 
could go before the court and demand to have his rent 
fixed, and this judicial rent was to last for fifteen years, 
during which no rise of rent was possible, and no eviction 
save for non-payment of rent or other breach of contract 
could take place. In case of the tenant wishing to sell the 
good-will of his holding, he could do so, but to the land- 
lord was reserved the privilege of preemption at the price 
fixed by the court as the value of the tenant. The court 
which was also to perform the functions of a land commis- 
sion, was to consist of three members, of whom one was 
always to be a judge or ex-judge of the supreme court; it 
was also empowered to appoint sub-commissioners to hear 
applications and fix fair rents. The action of the act was 
to be retrospective in cases where ejectment proceedings 
had been begun but not completed, and by an amend- 
ment it was subsequently empowered to quash leases drawn 
up since '70, in which the aims of the bill had been de- 
feated. But the events which had produced so great a 
change in English public opinion as to render it even pos- 
sible that such a bill as this could become law, had pro- 
duced a corresponding advance in Irish demands, and the 
Land Bill, which ten years earlier would have satisfied 
the utmost claims of the Home Rule party, now received 
only their very cold approval. Mr. Parnell had already 
announced as' his opinion that the land should belong to 
the cultivators, and that he intended to get it for them at 
as small a price as possible. "If we could get it for noth- 



THE LAKD ACT. 193 

ing at all," he had continued, "the price the farmers have 
been paying for it for generations would be ample com- 
pensation/' and it was well known that Messrs. Davitt and 
Dillon were also in favor of a project for buying out the 
landlords. 

The Nationalists therefore accepted the bill only as a 
half measure; they never pretended to think it would 
satisfy the demands of the Irish farmer, nor did they them- 
selves consider it a final adjustment of the land question; 
indeed, while it was in progress, Mr. Parnell described it as 
a "bill brought forward by the government in order to 
prop up for a few years longer the expiring system 
of landlordism. " But though the Nationalists accepted 
the bill without enthusiasm or gratitude, they desired to 
render it as useful as possible, and Mr. T. M. Healy dis- 
tinguished himself by his mastery of the details of the 
measure, and the construction of the famous "Healy 
Clause," by which the valuation of improvements made 
by the tenants are excluded in estimating the amount to 
be fixed as a judicial fair rent. But if the bill was too 
moderate to satisfy the representatives of the tenant class, 
its socialistic tendency laid it open to the denunciations of 
the landlords, by whom it was stigmatized as revolution- 
ary, a measure of communism, of robbery, and an in- 
fringement of the rights of property. The bill, in fact, 
was a compromise. By depriving the landlord of the 
power of fixing the value of his own property, of ejecting 
his tenant, and by acknowledging that some part of the 
value of the property was the just possession of the 
tenant, the bill practically conceded that, in the opinion 
of the government, the Irish landlords had exceeded their 
rights; that land was not an ordinary article of commerce; 
that the tenant was joint proprietor; and that the ten- 
antry needed some effectual protection against the rapacity 
of the landlords. The bill was also opposed on the score 
of dangerous precedent, and it was argued that the farm- 
ers of Great Britain would shortly clamor for the measure 
of land reform that had been granted to the Irish ten- 
antry. The plain answer to this was that the conditions 
and system of tenure in Ireland were utterly distinct from 



194 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

those of Great Britain, even admitting that land reform 
was greatly needed in the larger island. In spite, how- 
ever, of all opposition, the bill passed through the Com- 
mons on July 29th, but after its sojourn in the Lords it 
was sent back, amended out of all likeness to its original 
self. The Commons restored its essential provisions, but 
once more the Lords returned it with the objectionable 
alterations. Once more the Commons reconsidered the 
measure and sent it back to the Lords, who now finally 
accepted the bill as it was, and on August 22d it became 
law, and came into immediate operation. 

There was a tremendous rush of tenantry into the courts, 
and between August, 1881, and August, 1882, there were 
75, 807 applications to have a fair rent fixed. The court was 
blocked; during the year it had only disposed of 15,670 
cases, and had still 60,131 applications to consider. Be- 
sides these cases there were nearly 1,500 applications 
in the county courts, and in other cases rents were fixed 
by mutual agreement between landlord and tenant, re- 
sulting in a reduction of about 20 per cent, all round. 
" Altogether, " says Mr. Barry O'Brien, "during the three 
years ending August 21st, 1884, fair rents were fixed by 
the Land Court in 70,127 cases, the rental having been re- 
duced, in round numbers, from £1,407,465 to £1,133,174, 
or 19 .4 per cent. Within the same period fair rents were fixed 
by the county courts in 6,387 cases, the rental having been 
reduced from £96,121 to £75,849, or 21 per cent. Besides 
these there were 66,815 cases in which rents were fixed be- 
tween landlord and tenant under the authority of the land 
courts, the rental having been reduced from £1,139,453 to 
£994,451, or 17. 1 per cent. ; 5,759 cases in which rents were 
fixed in the same way under the authority of the county 
courts, the rental having been reduced from £97,316 to 
£80,319, or 19.4 per cent.; 339 cases in which rents were 
fixed by valuers under the land courts, the rental having 
been reduced from £9,033 to £8,091, or 10.4 per cent.; 
and 12 cases in which rents were fixed by arbitration, the 
rental having been reduced from £908 to £660, or 27.2 
per cent." 

No stronger case for the justice of the tenants' claim 



IliELAND UNDEB THE CRIMES ACT. 195 

could be made out, for in the cases submitted to it, the 
court decided that the rents averaged 20 per cent, above 
what was fair. Still the Irish farmer does not accept even 
these reductions as final. In the present depressed state of 
agriculture the fair rent of 1881 is excessisve rent in the 
winter of '85-'86. The English landlord is offering reduc- 
tions of 20, 25, and in some cases even 40 or 50 per cent, off 
rents which have always been acknowledged by the tenant 
to be fair. The Irish landlord has in many cases refused 
any abatement. Ejectment notices have been served in 
great numbers: on one single day 500 were posted on the 
door of one country church. At Killarney quarter ses- 
sions 250 ejectment notices were disposed of on the 7th 
January, 1886. "The judge said it was the most painful 
day he ever experienced in giving so many ejectment de- 
crees, and he hoped that such a state of things would not 
exist long." And although the weather was the most se- 
vere that had been known for years, and snow covered the 
ground to the depth of several inches, many evictions were 
carried out. With whomsoever the fault may lie, the land 
question cannot be considered settled when eviction, boy- 
cotting, and outrage are matters of daily occurrence. The 
Land Bill of 1881 has no more settled thel and question 
than did its predecessors of 1860 and 1870, and on this sub- 
ject the last word has yet to be spoken. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

IRELAND UNDER THE CRIMES ACT. 

Five months after the suppression of the Land League, 
the government resolved on a change of policy, and turned 
its attention once more toward healing measures. The 
Coercion Act was the most stringent that had been passed 
since the union; it had destroyed liberty of the press, free- 
dom of speech, and had imprisoned 918 persons without 
trial, and in many cases without even letting them know 
the offences with which they were charged. But these 
drastic measures, far from pacifying the country, had 



196 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

brought it to the very verge of civil war, and outrages in- 
creased in number and atrocity. The imprisonment of 
the "constitutional" agitators had given the country over 
to secret societies, and though Mr. Forster knew it not, a 
band of assassins dogged his steps, and his life was pre- 
served only by a series of accidents little short of miracu- 
lous. The condition of the country throughout the winter 
of 1881-82 was truly appalling; there were no inflamma- 
tory speeches, no seditious prints, yet lawlessness increased 
and was only equalled by the wide-spread distress. The 
landlords, hard [pressed for money, and many of them with 
heavy mortgage interests to pay, clamored for their rent; 
the tenants, unable to pay, abandoned by government, de- 
prived of the advice and support of their leaders, took des- 
perate revenge on land grabbers, process servers, and evic- 
ting landlords. These outrages steeled the hearts of the 
landlords, and so throughout the miserable winter the 
old story of "brutal repression followed by savage retalia- 
tion" was told in a hundred different ways. Early in 
the year, Mr. Parnell drafted an Arrears Bill and sent it 
out of prison to Mr. John Kedmond. This bill proposed 
to wipe out the inevitable arrears of rent which had accu- 
mulated during the bad summers of 1878 and 1879, and 
which entangled the smaller farmers in a mesh of hopeless 
difficulty. The measure was favorably criticised by Mr. 
Gladstone, and it soon became evident that a milder policy 
was about to be adopted toward Ireland. On the 30th of 
April a letter from Mr. Parnell to Captain O'Shea was 
shown by that officer to Mr. Forster and other members of 
the government, and in consequence of the opinions stated 
in it the ministry determined on releasing Mr. Parnell and 
his colleagues. It is this letter which forms the basis of 
the famous Kilmainham Treaty, and the important pas- 
sages are as follows: — "I desire to impress upon you the ab- 
solute necessity of a settlement of the arrears question 
which will leave no recurring sore connected with it be- 
hind, and which w r ill enable us to show the smaller ten- 
antry that they have been treated with justice and some 
generosity. ... If the arrears question be settled 
upon the line indicated by us, I have every confidence — a 



IRELAND UNDER THE CRIMES ACT. 197 

confidence shared by my colleagues — that the exertions 
which we should be able to make, strenuously and unre- 
mittingly, would be effective in stopping outrages and in- 
timidation of all kinds. As regards permanent legislation 
of an ameliorating character, I may say that the views 
which you always shared with me as to the admission of 
leaseholders to the fair rent clauses of the act are more 
confirmed than ever. So long as the flower of the Irish 
peasantry are kept outside the act there cannot be the per- 
manent settlement of the land question which we all so 
much desire. I should also strongly hope that some com- 
promise might be arrived at this session with regard to the 
amendment of the tenure clauses of the Land Act. It is 
unnecessary for me to dwell upon the enormous advantages 
to be derived from the full extension of the purchase 
clauses, which now seem practically to have been adopted 
by all parties. The accomplishment of the programme I 
have sketched out to you would, in my judgment, be re- 
garded by the contry as a practical settlement of the land 
question, and would, I feel sure, enable us to co-operate 
cordially for the future with the Liberal party in forward- 
ing Liberal principles; and I believe that the government, 
at the end of the session, would from the state of the 
country feel themselves thoroughly justified in dispensing 
with future coercive measures." 

Immediately on the receipt of this letter the suspects 
were released. Lord Cowper and Mr. Forster resigned, 
and were replaced by lord Spencer and lord Frederick 
Cavendish; and on May 6th Mr. Davitt was released from 
Portland prison, but on that very day lord Frederick Cav- 
endish and the under secretary, Mr. Burke, were murdered 
in Phoenix Park. Never since the murder of Mr. Percival 
in the lobby of the House of Commons had any event 
caused so great horror. The motive of the crime was not 
known, but it seemed a direct answer to the proclamation 
of a policy of conciliation. Eventually it was discovered 
that Mr. Burke, who was a permanent official, had been 
marked out as a victim by the assassination society which 
had so long dogged the steps of Mr. Forster, and that lord 
Frederick Cavendish had been killed only because he did 



198 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

not desert his comrade. But the immediate effect of the 
Phcenix Park murder was to bring the policy of concilia- 
tion to a close before it was a week old, and another Coer- 
cion Bill was introduced at once. This bill was even more 
stringent than its forerunner. Its main provisions were to 
allow trial by three judges without jury, to legalize the 
right of search by day or night in a proclaimed district, 
to sanction the arrest without warrant of any person found 
prowling about after dark, to revive the Alien Act giving 
power to arrest and remove from the country foreigners 
who might be considered dangerous to the public peace, to 
punish intimidation with summary imprisonment, to em- 
power the government to seize newspapers inciting to 
crime, and to authorize the viceroy to deal with unlawful 
assemblies by a court of summary jurisdiction consisting 
of two resident magistrates. The bill was resisted by the 
Parnellites as passionately as its forerunner had been, but 
it eventually became law, though some of its most strin- 
gent provisions remained a dead letter. 

The Arrears Bill ran through the House at the same time 
as the Crimes Act, and adopted as its basis the principle of 
compulsion or gift. Its operation was limited to holdings 
under the value of £30 (Griffith's valuation), and only to 
such tenants as could show that their rent had been paid 
between November, 1880, and November, 1881. The 
tenant, moreover, would have to give good proof before the 
land commission court or the county court of his inability 
to pay before his demand on the landlord or State could be 
entertained. The benefits of the bill were alike open to 
landlord and tenant, and they provided that the tenant 
having paid his one year's arrears, the State would pay one 
half the arrears, or one year's rent, and the landlord would 
remit the remainder. The bill must undoubtedly have 
saved many tenants from eviction, but at the same time it 
was a measure of relief as much to the landlord as the 
tenant, for the State made compensation for a bad debt 
which under other circumstances could never have been 
repaid. 

The autumn was marked in Ireland by an attempt to 
resuscitate Irish trade and industry. An exhibition of 



IRELAND UNDER THE CRIMES ACT. 199 

Irish manufactures was held in Dublin/ and efforts were 
made in various ways to encourage home industry. Later 
in the year the Ladies' Land League was supplanted by a 
new organization — the National League — in which women 
took no part, but several members of the Ladies' Land 
League were empowered by the new society to found 
industries among the evicted tenantry of the west. These 
ladies went unprotected and alone to the wildest districts; 
in some of these places there were no houses for them to 
live in, and the League provided huts similar to those it 
was in the habit of erecting for evicted tenants. In these 
solitary huts the ladies held classes, teaching the women to 
knit, crochet, and sew; and by their instrumentality many 
were able to earn the bread they must otherwise have 
begged. Meanwhile it was found that the new Coercion 
Act was of no more efficiency than its forerunner in 
governing the country. The practice of boycotting was 
put down, but outrages were of daily occurrence, and there 
were many horrible murders; and in November the life of 
Mr. Justice Lawson was attempted in the Dublin streets. 
On the next evening a juryman, named Field, was attacked 
also in Dublin, and these daring attempts within the city 
filled society with grave alarms. Further steps were taken 
to silence seditious speakers, and early in January '83, 
Messers. Davitt, Healy, and Quinn were charged, not 
under the Coercion Act, but under a law which had not 
been put in force since Wentworth's administration in 
the days of Charles I. Judgment was given against them; 
they were charged to give surety for good behavior, or in 
default to six month's imprisonment; they chose the latter 
alternative, and were committed to gaol early in February. 
At the same time an action for libel on lord Spencer was 
proceeding against Mr. William O'Brien, the editor of 
United Ireland, who during the trial was elected member 
for Mallow. But the great interest of this period was the 
discovery of the Invincible Society, by whose members 
lord F. Cavendish and Mr. Burke had been murdered, and 
who had made the attacks on Mr. Justice Lawson and Mr. 
Field. It was in connection with these latter offences that 
the arrests were made, and it was not till the beginning of 



200 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

February that evidence connected the Invincibles with the 
Phoenix Park murders. Ultimately five of the Invincibles 
were hanged, others sentenced to various terms of impris- 
onment, and James Carey, the founder and instigator of 
the society, turned queen's evidence, and received a free 
pardon. He did not long live to enjoy the reward of his 
treachery. Later in the year he and his family emigrated, 
but he was tracked on board ship, and shot by a man 
named O'Donnell. O'Donnell was tried in England, but 
even here much sympathy was felt for him; once the jury 
disagreed, and at the second trial the jurors asked to 
bring in a verdict of manslaughter, but he was eventually 
hanged, and his execution created much less stir than had 
been anticipated. Meanwhile a new and infinitely terrible 
society was appearing in Irish-American politics; in March 
there was an attempt to blow up the offices of the Local 
Government Board and of the Times with dynamite; and 
in November two explosions occurred on the underground 
railway. In February, '84, a terrible explosion shattered 
a great part of the Victoria station, and on the next day 
infernal machines were discovered at Ludgate Hill, 
Charing Cross, and Paddington; and in May simultaneous 
explosions occurred in St. James Square and the Junior 
Carlton Club. In November there was an explosion in 
Oldham, and in December one under London Bridge, and 
a case of two cwt. of dynamite was discovered at Dover 
custom-house. But the climax was reached in January, 
1885, when serious damage was done to St. Stephen's Hall, 
Westminster, and to the Tower of London. That was the 
last serious explosion, but the "dynamite party" continued 
to receive fuds for their abominable outrages till the lapse 
of the Coercion Act, when the fund suddenly ran down, 
and was closed for want of support. 

The spring session of 1884 was chiefly occupied in 
passing a .Reform Bill conferring the franchise on all 
householders. The desirability of inculding Ireland in 
the benefits of act was hotly debated, and lord Claud 
Hamilton moved as an amendment, that the words Great 
Britain be substituted for the United Kingdom, but the 
ministers refused to consider the measure in a mutilated 



THE ELECTIONS OF 1885. 201 

form, and eventually the bill passed the Commons. It 
was, however, thrown out by the Lords, on the plea that it 
was worse than useless unless accompanied by a Redistri- 
bution Bill, and an autumn session was devoted to passing 
this measure. The Redistribution Bill was much needed 
in Ireland. Many of the small boroughs, such as Portar- 
lington, Mallow, New Ross, were thoroughly rotten, and 
in reducing the number of borough members, and increasing 
the representatives of the counties, the bill did good work. 
That was the last measure of importance passed by the 
Gladstone ministry for Ireland. Throughout the winter, 
Egypt, not Ireland, occupied the public mind, and in the 
spring the Russian difficulty was the center of interest. But 
Ireland took care that she was not forgotten, and, in April, 
the prince of Wales made a conciliatory visit to Ireland, 
taking with him the princess and his young son. A lev£e 
and drawing-room were held, and the royal party were well 
received in Dublin, but in the provinces they met with a 
less cordial reception. Meanwhile ministers were debating 
whether to renew the whole or any part of the Crimes Act, 
which would expire in July. But the Conservatives were 
destined to decide this question, for on June 8th the Con- 
servatives and Nationalists obtained a majority of twelve 
over the ministry on a budget question. Mr. Gladstone 
immediately resigned, and when lord Salisbury became 
premier he decided on the experiment of governing Ireland 
without exceptional powers. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

THE ELECTIONS OF 1885. 

The events of the autumn of '85 are too recent for us 
to be able to see them in their proper proportions, and the 
facts are too fresh in our memories to . require any detailed 
survey. The early part of the autumn was spent by poli- 
ticians of the three kingdoms in an election campaign, 
and in a diligent revision of the voting register. 

No sooner were the Liberals out of office than Messrs. 



202 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

Chamberlain and Dilke formed the project of a tonr in 
Ireland; both had voted for what a Conservative contem- 
porary terms "Oromwellian Coercion Acts," but the failure 
of these had produced a sudden conversion, and as early 
as June 17th Mr. Chamberlain was denouncing a system 
"founded on 30,000 soldiers encamped permanently in a 
hostile country," and declared that ''an alien board of for- 
eign officials" must be removed in favor "of a genuine 
Irish administration for purely Irish business." But this 
change of policy within live months of a general election, 
and while the Irish vote was yet unpromised, was mistrust- 
ed by the Nationalists; the proposal of the ex-ministerial 
tour was coldly received, and for various reasons the pro- 
ject was abandoned. Soon it became known that the Irish 
vote in England would be given to the Conservatives, 
partly as a protest against the government that had come 
in to further a policy of conciliation and had passed the 
most stringent Coercion Acts of the century, and partly 
to equalize the English parties, and thus leave the balance 
of power with Mr. Parnell. The Parnellites in Ireland 
were thoroughly organizing the country; mass meetings 
were held in every district, and in October a series of con- 
ventions assembled to elect the Nationalist candidates for 
the various constituencies. The Unionists, seeing the pre- 
parations of the Home Rulers, made common cause, and, 
sinking the old animosities of Whig and Tory, agreed to 
run only one Loyalist candidate in constituencies that were 
contested by Nationalists, and in order to determine the 
true state of public feeling they resolved to contest every 
constituency in the three southern provinces. This part 
of the programme was not strictly adhered to, for it was 
felt that the Unionists would obtain no support in some 
of the Connaught divisions, and in many that they con- 
tested they polled very few votes — 30 in East Kerry, 75 in 
South Mayo, and only just over the hundred in several 
others, against Nationalist polls averaging four thousand. 
The Unionists attributed this want of support to the in- 
timidation of the Nationalists, and it is possible that the 
dread of boycotting, which revived very much during the 
autumn, may have kept some voters trom the poll; but, on 



THE ELECTIONS OE 1885. 203 

the other hand, fear of eviction must have caused many 
Nationalist farmers, who were backward with their rent, 
to abstain from voting. But the percentage from either 
cause cannot have been very high, for there must be always 
a certain number of voters who, through sickness, stress 
of business, or distance, are unable to go to the poll, and 
the total poll of Ireland was 75 per cent of the voters, 
whereas the percentage in the London boroughs was only 74. 

The three southern provinces returned a solid phalanx 
of Nationalists, and it was in Ulster that the real conflict 
.took place. Twelve Ulster constituencies were so well 
known to be Unionist that the Nationalists did not contest 
them. These all fell to Conservatives, and in four contests 
the Nationalissts were beaten by Conservatives. Thus six- 
teen of the Ulster seats returned Conservatives, and seven- 
teen Nationalists: Dublin University returned two Conser- 
vatives without a contest, so that the representation of Ire- 
land stood — Nationalists, 86; Conservatives, 18; Liberals, 
0. The Irish vote in England succeeded in turning the 
scale in twenty-five boroughs, and thus the casting vote is 
secured to the Home Rulers, the balance of parties being 
— Liberals, 333; Conservatives, 251; Home Rulers, 86. 
Majority of Home Rulers and Conservatives ovar Liberals, 
4; of Liberals and Home Rulers over Conservatives, 148. 

The elections were barely over, when Mr. Gladstone let 
it be known in a semi-official manner that he would be 
prepared to deal with the Home Rule question on the fol- 
lowing lines: — The maintenance of the unity of the em- 
pire, the authority of the crown and the supremacy of the 
imperial parliament to be assured. The creation of an 
Irish parliament, to be intrusted with the entire manage- 
ment of all legislative and administrative affairs, securities 
being taken for the representation of minorities, and for 
an equitable partition of all imperial charges. At the an- 
nouncement all England, Liberal and Conservative, was in 
an uproar, and very bitter accusations were made against 
Mr. Gladstone and his sudden conversion, but it is only 
just to remember that in February, 1882, while he was 
pursuing a policy of coercion, Mr. Gladstone already ad- 
mitted on two occasions that the Home Rule question was 



204 IRISH HISTORY FOR EKGLI3H READERS. 

one which might be dealt with in parliament. The tone 
of the English press since the Hawarden utterance, no less 
than the words of the queen's speech at the opening of 
parliament on "the 21st of January, show that the feeling 
of the country is antagonistic to repeal of the union. "I 
have seen with deep sorrow/ 7 said her majesty/' the renew- 
al, since I last addressed you, of the attempt to excite the 
people of Ireland to hostility against the legislative union 
between that country and Great Britain. I am resolutely 
opposed to any disturbance of that fundamental law, and 
in resisting it I am convinced that I shall be heartily sup- 
ported by my parliament and my people." 

But now, at the opening of the first parliament repre- 
senting the householders of the three kingdoms, let us 
pause and ask ourselves whither our Irish policy is leading 
us. During 74 of the 85 years of legislative union we have 
attempted to govern Ireland by what, in direct contradic- 
tion of fact, we still call exceptional legislation, and yet, 
even with powers more stringent than martial law, we, 
with a force of forty thousand military and police, are un- 
able to uphold the law among an adult male population of 
500,000 persons. Under our government, three-eighths of 
the population has in one generation disappeared by fam- 
ine, and the majority of the remainder are worse housed, 
worse clothed, worse fed than in any other country under 
heaven pretending to civilization. The lands of Connaught 
are in many places not worth twopence an acre without 
the value of the tenants' labor; lay them down in grass or 
plough them, and in a few years they will return to their 
pristine bog — only by spade culture can they be kept in 
cultivation. Yet from such lands as these in the famine 
year of '78 one man alone drew £27,000, while those who 
paid him were dependent for very food on charity. By 
repeated concessions to the tenants we have acknowledged 
that we know the system of land tenure in Ireland to be 
wrong; by their spiritless acquiescence in the curtailment 
of their power the landlords have admitted that they know 
themselves to have exceeded their rights. The land ques- 
tion of Ireland will never be settled till the cultivator is 
the possessor of the soil. A long system of wrong has en- 



THE ELECTIONS OF 1885. 205 

gendered wrong; the landlords of to-day are the victims of 
their position and of the extravagance of their forefathers. 
One of three things we mnst do: we must suppress as best 
we can by force the expression of discontent born of cold, 
and misery, and hunger; we must throw the landlords over- 
board, or we must buy them out. Redress is due to the 
peasantry, but redress without compensation means wrong 
to thousands of innocent persons who have grown up un- 
der existing laws. We have tried expensive coercion; we 
have tried cheap conciliation; let us for once and the first 
time try the experiment of expensive justice to Ireland. 
Let us realize that peace at home is as well worth a rise of 
income tax as war abroad, and let the Irish landlords be 
bought out and compensated as were the slave owners of 
the West Indies. They must lose something by the trans- 
action, and so must we; but if the tenant buys at ten years' 
purchase, and the landlord receives fifteen, the generosity 
of the English taxpayer will cost him no dearer than a few 
years of coercive policy. 

There is another matter that we shall do well to decide 
calmly and without bitterness. Can we, or can we not, 
entertain the project of Home Eule? The law of self- 
preservation is first among nations, as among individuals. 
A great power cannot sacrifice herself for a small island, 
and the empire is justified in refusing any demand that 
endangers the empire. The nearness of Ireland to our 
coasts, and her richness in natural harbors, compels us to 
deal with any demand for separation in a high-handed 
manner. No project for Home Rule could be entertained 
which would involve the loss of naval or military power in 
Ireland; the ports, the army, and the forts must be under im- 
perial control. But at this moment there is no real demand 
for separation. Ireland knows that she gains much in safety 
and in other ways from the connection, and practical poli- 
ticians are aware that the day of small States is gone by. 
The concession of Home Rule would probably kill any wish 
that now exists for separation; but in our wealth, our army, 
our population of six to one, we have every security, for 
we could annihilate Ireland in a week. 

A difficulty of another kind is the demand of the Na- 



206 IRISH HISTORY FOR ENGLISH READERS. 

tionalists for the right to protect Irish manufactures, and 
on this subject <the Irish leaders have spoken definitely. 
"We should insist/' says Mr. Parnell, "upon a parliament 
that shall have the power to protect Irish manufactures, if 
it be the wish of that parliament, and of the Irish people, 
that they should be protected. No parliament will work 
satisfactorily which has not free powers to raise revenues 
for the purposes of government in Ireland in such a way as 
shall seem fit and best to it. I am of the opinion — an 
opinion which I have expressed before now — that it would 
be well to protect certain industries, at all events for a 
time." 

That this policy would be fatal to what little there is of 
Irish trade, is a generally received impression in England. 
But the trade of Ireland is moribund, it cannot be ruined; 
and if its bad case were made worse by protection the mis- 
take could be remedied in a single day. We do not withhold 
the right of protection from our colonies. Firmly con- 
vinced of the benefits of free trade, we receive the products 
of Australia and Canada, and let those colonies levy duty 
on ours. Why should we treat Ireland in a less liberal 
manner? The empire would not be endangered by a duty 
on English woolens and calicoes; the Irish consumption is 
not so great that our trade would be impoverished. At 
least, before the new parliament forces a fresh coercive 
measure on Ireland, let us pause and consider the fruits 
of the repressive policy of the last government. When 
Mr. Gladstone came into power Ireland was, as now, under- 
going a season of agricultural depression. Bad weather 
had brought bad crops, the tenants could not pay, and the 
landlords punished poverty with eviction. The Irish 
members — the representatives of the farming class — warned 
us that if nothing were done to stay evictions, disturbances 
would ensue. Nothing was done, the warning was construed 
as a threat, and was disregarded, the disturbances came, 
and we met them with coercion; we silenced the mouth- 
pieces of the people, we threw them in gaol, we turned 
them out of parliament, we checked the expression of 
discontent, and drove the county into the old paths of 
outrage We introduced a Land Bill that satisfied our ideas 



THE ELECTIONS OF 1885. 20? 

of the needs of Ireland, but the men who knew the country 
told us that it was insufficient. Again we turned a deaf 
ear to their warning, and when the event proved the truth 
of their opinion, we met the difficulty with another Coercian 
Bill more stringent than the last. By this we forced the 
agitators from the field; some retired, others took a second- 
ary part to which we had consigned them, but not the law 
but the outrage-monger and dynamiter played the leading 
role. "Men in the extremity of suffering, " said Landor, 
"lose sooner the sense of fear than the excitability to 
indignation. Cruelty is no more the cure of crimes than 
it is the cure of suffering; compassion, in the first instance, 
is good for both. I have known it to bring compunction 
when nothing else would. Let us try, then, rather to re- 
move the ills of Ireland than to persuade those who undergo 
them that there are none. For if they could be thus per- 
suaded we should have brutalized them first to such a 
degree as would render them more dangerous than they 
were in the reigns of Elizabeth or Charles. There will 
never be a want of money or a want of confidence in any 
well-governed State that has been long at peace, and with- 
out the danger of its interruption. But a want of the 
necessaries of life, in peasants or artisans, when the seasons 
have been favorable, is a certain sign of defect in the con- 
stitution, or of criminality in the administration. It may 
not be advisable or safe to tell every one this truth, yet it 
is needful to inculcate it on the minds of governors, and 
to repeat it until they find out the remedy, else the people, 
one day or other, will pend those out to look for it who 
may trample down more in the search than suits good 
husbandry." 



A TABLE OF DATES. 



A.D. 

281. Overthrow of the Fenian Power. 

378. Accession of Niall Mor. 

432. The Mission of St. Patrick. 

465. The Death of St. Patrick. 

521. Birth of St. Columba. 

563. Mission of St. Columba to the Northern Picts. 

795. First Danish Invasion. 

980. Brian Boru succeeds to the Throne of Munster. 
1014. Defeat of the Danes at Clontarf. 
1166. Accession of Rory O'Connor, last Ard-Righ of Erin. 
1169. The Norman Barons invade Leinster. 
1171. Invasion under Henry II. 
1174. Battle of Thurles. 
1193. Death of Rory O'Connor. 
1216. Henry III., on his accession, extends the privileges of Magna 

Charta to his Irish subjects. 
1367. Statute of Kilkenny. 

1478. Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kildare, created Lord Deputy. 
1487. Lambert Simnel crowned King of Ireland. 
1490. Arrival of Perkin Warbeck in Cork. 
1494. Poyning's Law is passed. 

1496. Kildare arrested for rebellion, and reinstated Lord Deputy. 

1497. Battle of Knocktow. 

1513. Death of Kildare — Succeeded by his son Gerald. 

1534. Kildare is imprisoned in the Tower — Rebellion of his son, 

Thomas Fitzgerald. 
1537. Execution of Thomas Fitzgerald and his rive uncles. 

1540. Henry VIII. distributes the Church Lands. 

1541. The title of King of Ireland conferred on the English King. 
1548. O'More and O'Connor, chieftains of Leix and Off ally, impris- 
oned in England. 

1552. Dispute between Matthew and Shane O'Neill. 

1558. The plantation of Leix and OfTally. 

1559. Shane O'Neill succeeds to the title of The O'Neill. 
1561. O'Neill visits Queen Elizabeth. 

1563. O'Neill signs a peace with Elizabeth and massacres the Scot- 
tish settlers of Antrim. 



TABLE OP DATES. 209 

A.D. 

1567. O'Neill and his retinue take refuge with the Scots and are 

murdered. Sidney arrests the Earl of Desm >nd and John 
Fitzgerald and sends them to the Tower. 

1568. Rising of Sir James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald. 

1569. Elizabeth confiscates the territory of the O'Neills. 

1570. Sir Thomas Smith murdered while attempting to plant County 

Down. 
1572. Sir James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald surrenders. 
1574. Escape of the Earl of Desmond. 

1576. Drury and Malby appointed Presidents of Munster and Con- 

naught. 

1577. Massacre of Mullaghmast. 

1579. The Desmond Rebellion — Death of Sir James Fitzmaurice— 
The Earl of Desmond joins the rebels. 

1582. Death of Sir John and Sir James Geraldine — Suppression of 

the rebellion. 

1583. Death of the Earl of Desmond. 

1586. The Plantation of Munster — Perrot seizes Red Hugh O'Don 

nell. 
1589. Confiscation of Monaghan. 
1592. Escape of Red Hugh O'Donnell. 
1595. Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, elected The O'Neill. 

1599. Campaign of Essex in Munster. 

1600. Mount joy commands the English forces. 
1603. Surrender of Hugh— Death of Elizabeth. 

1607. Flight of Tyrone and Tyrconnel. 

1608. Confiscation of six Ulster Counties. 

1611. Plantation of Ulster 

1612. Plantation of Wexford. 

1619. Plantation of Longford and Westmeath. 

1622. Plantation of Leitrim and part of Leix and Off ally, 

1625. Accession of Charles. 

1626. The "graces" promised. 

1633. Wentworth appointed Lord Deputy. 

1635. Commission of Defective Titles in Connaught. 

1640. Wentworth becomes Lord Strafford and Lord Lieutenant of 

Ireland. 

1641. Outbreak of the Rebellion. 

1642. Owen Roe O'Neill and Colonel Preston land in Ireland — Con- 

federation of Kilkenny 
1646. Battle of Benburb. 
1649. Peace signed between the King and the Confederates — The 

Execution of Charles — Cromwell arrives in Ireland — Death 

of Owen Roe. 

1652. End of the Civil War. 

1653. Cromwell begins his Plantation. 
1658. Death of Cromwell. 

1660. Charles II. declared King. 

14 



210 TABLE OF DATES. 

A.D. 

1662. The Act of Settlement. 

1663. The Court of Claims opens in Dublin. 
1685. Accession of James II. 

1688. William III. lands in Torbay. 

1689. Talbot raises Rapparees for James — Siege of Derry and En- 

niskillen — James lands at Cork — Convenes Parliament in 
Dublin — Derry is delivered. 

1690. Arrival of William — Battle of the Boyne — Flight of James- 

First Siege of Limerick — Marlborough captures Cork and 
Kinsale. 

1691. Battle of Aughrim — Siege and Treaty of Limerick. 

1692. Emigration of Catholics — Catholics excluded from the Irish 

Parliament. 
1696. Act for disarming Catholics and rendering foreign education 
penal. 

1698. Penal Acts against mixed marriages — Banishment of the 

Romish Clergy. 

1699. Prohibitive tariff on the export of Irish wool. 

1701. Roman Catholic Solicitors disqualified. 

1702. Accession of Anne. 

1704. Penal Acts against Catholics. 

1706. Further Acts against Solicitors. 

1710. Penal Act against Catholics. 

1711. Persecution of Presbyterians. 

1713. Swift becomes Dean of St. Patrick's. 

1714. Accession of George I. 

1719. The English Parliament empowered to make Laws to bind 
the Irish people — The Irish House of Lords deprived of 
right to affirm or reverse judgment. 

1723. Wood's Patent granted — Cancelled two years later — Potato 
Famine. 

1727. Accession of George II. — Roman Catholics Disfranchised. 

1734. Stringent Act against Catholic Solicitors — Berkeley conse- 
crated Bishop of Cloyne. 

1744. Chesterfield made Viceroy. 

1745. Lucas enters Parliament— Battles of Fontenoy and Prestonpans. 

1746. Terrible Potato Famine— Battle of Culloden. 

1759. Riots in Dublin on the Rumor of Union. 

1760. Accession of George III. — Denis Daly, Hussy Burgh, and 

Henry Flood enter Parliament. 

1761. Whiteboy Insurrection. 

1762. Oakboy Insurrection. 

1767. Octennial Act. 

1768. Rising of the Steelboys. 

1773. Irish National Debt reaches the figure of £1,000,000. 

1775. Outbreak of the War of American Independence — Grattan 

enters Parliament — Troops sent from Ireland against the 

Colonists — Flood becomes Vice- Treasurer. 



TABLE OF DATES. 211 

A.D. 

1776. Embargo on Exports to America. 

1778. First Roman Catholic Relief Bill. 

1779. Formation of the Irish Volunteers. 

1780. Freedom of Trade with the Colonies granted to Ireland. 

1782. Grattan's Parliaments. 

1783. The Volunteer Convention — Rejection of Flood's Reform 

Bill. 

1784. Agrarian feuds of Orangemen and Defenders. 
1786. Anti-Tithe disturbances in Munster. 

1789. The Regency difficulty — Outbreak of the French Revolu- 
tion. 

1791. Agitation for Catholic Emancipation — Formation of the So- 

ciety of United Irishmen. 

1792. The Legal Prof ession opened to Catholics — Restrictions on 

Catholic Education removed — The House of Commons 
destroyed by fire. 

1793. Catholics allowed to vote at Elections — Enfranchisement of 

40s. Freeholders — Execution of Louis XVI.— War de- 
clared by France against England — The Pension List re- 
vised—Public Debt of Ireland £2,400,000. 

1794. Suppression of the Society of United Irishman — Lord Fitz- 

william appointed Viceroy. 

1795. Maynooth College founded and endowed by Parliament — 

Viceroyalty of Lord Fitzwilliam— Recall of Fitzwilliam 
Rejection of Reform Bill — Reconstruction of United Irish 
Society — Tone goes to America. 

1796. The Insurrection Act— Extension of United Irish Society — 

French Fleet appears in Bantry Bay. 

1797. Martial Law in Ulster — Reform Bill rejected — Execution of 

William Orr— National Debt of Ireland £4,000,000. 

1798. Abercrombie commands the English Forces — Is succeeded by 

Lake — Arrest of the Directory of the United Irish Society 
— The Rebellion — French Expedition to Killala and Lough 
Swilly — Death of Tone — Execution of Rebels — Proposal 
of Union. 

1799. Resistance to Union. 

1800. The Union is passed. 

1801. Jan. 1., the Union comes into operation — Irish National 

Debt, £26,841,219— Act for suspending the Habeas Corpus 

and empowering the Viceroy to proclaim Martial Law. 
*1802. Peace of Amiens — United Irishmen released from Fort 

George — Robert Emmet arrives in Dublin. 
*1803. The French War resumed — Emmet's rebellion. 
1804. Pitt resumes office — Napoleon crowned Emperor — National 

Debt of Ireland, £43,000,000. 

The years, since the Union, during which Ireland has been gov- 
erned by ordinary law are marked with a star (*). 



212 TABLE OF DATES. 

A D. 

*1805. Catholic Petition presented by Grenville and Fox— The Veto 

is first hinted at— National Debt of Ireland, £52,000,000. 
*1806. Death of Pitt— Grenville- Fox ministry— Death of Fox. 

1807. No Popery ministry — Wellesley becomes Chief Secretary — 

Revival of Whiteboyism — Insurrection Act. 

1808. Catholic Petition, with Veto, presented by Grattan — The 

Roman Catholic Prelates protest against the Veto. 

1809. Continuation of Catholic agitation— Growth of Orangeism. 

1810. Veto and payment of Catholic clergy proposed— Rejected by 

Irish Catholics — O'Connell becomes Chairman of the 
Catholic Association — Agitation for Repeal. 

*1811. Peel becomes Chief Secretary — Insurrection Act expires. 

-1813. Grattan moves for Catholic Emancipation with Veto. 

1814. The Catholic Board is suppressed — Insurrection Act. 

1815. Peace of Waterloo— The population of Ireland, 6,000,000— 

Act passed facilitating Evictions. 
1817. Famine and disturbance— Martial law — Military force in Ire- 
land, 120,000— The Irish National Debt, amounting to 
£112,704,773, incorporated with that of Great Britain. 

*1818. Insurrection Act expires. 

*1819. The six Acts. 

*1820. Accession of George IV. —Death of Grattan. 

*1821. Plunket brings in Emancipation Bill — The King visits Ire- 
land—Population, 6,801,827. 

1822. Famine — Insurrection Act— Habeas Corpus suspended. 

1823. The Catholic Association formed by O'Connell and Shiel. 

1824. The "Catholic rent" represents half -a-million associates. 

1825. The Association is suppressed and reconstructed — Govern- 

ment brings in a Bill for Emancipation with "wings" — 
Bill rejected by Lords 

1826. Exports of grain and Cattle to England worth nearly 

£8,000,000. 

1827. Death of Canning. 

1828. Wellington-Peel ministry — Repeal of Test Act and Corpora- 

tion Act — O'Connell elected for Clare. 

1829. Catholic Emancipation — Disfranchisement of the-40s. free- 

holders. 
*1830. Accession of William IV. 

1831. Stanley's Bill for National Education— Tithe War— Arms 

Act— Population of Ireland, 7,734,365 ; of England and 
Wales, 13,894,574 ; of Scotland, 2,365,807. 

1832. Tithe War. 

1833. Grey's Coercion Act — Church Temporalities Act. 

• 1834. O'Connell takes up the Repeal Question seriously. 

1835. Lord Lieutenant empowered to issue Special Commissions to 

try off enders— Thomas Drummond becomes Chief Secretary. 

1836. Municipal Reform Bill. 

1837. Accession of Queen Victoria. 



TABLE OF DATES. 213 

A.D. 

1838. Pour Law — Tithe Commutation Act — Father Mathew joins 

the teetotal movement. 

1839. The Precursor Society. 

1841. The Peel Ministry — The Repeal Association — Population of 
Ireland, 8,175,124 ; of England and Wales, 15,906,741 : 
of Scotland, 2,G20,184. 
*1842. Foundation of the Young Ireland Party. 

1843. The Repeal Year — Arrest of O'Connell and others — The 

State Trials begin — Value of export provisions to England, 
£16,000,000— Arms Act. 

1844. The Traversers are convicted — Judgment reversed by the 

House of Lords — The Devon Commission. 

1845. The Government Grant to Maynooth increased — Foundation 

of the Queen's Colleges— Death of Davis— Patato blight. 
*1846. Commencement of the Famine — Repeal of Corn Laws — 
£100,000 voted for relief of distress — The embargo on the 
importation of Indian corn is raised — Smith O'Brien im- 
prisoned in the Clock Tower — The Young Irelanders se- 
cede from the Repeal Association — 300,000 persons perish 
from want and typhus. 

1847. Famine — Crime and Outrage Act — Deaths by famine and 

fever, 500,000 ; Emigration, 200,000 ; Value of Agricul- 
tural produce, £44,958,120. 

1848. The French Revolution— The Abortive Rising. 

1849. Encumbered Estates Act. 

1850. The Irish Tenant League— Electoral Reform Bill. 

1851. Population of Ireland, 6,552,385 , of England and Wales, 

17,927,609; of Scotland, 2,888,724; Emigration from Ire - 
257,372. 

1852. General Election — Many Tenant Leaguers returned — Emi- 

gration, 368,764. 

1854. Foundation of the Catholic University. 

1855. Formation of the Palmerston Ministry. 

1860. The Land Bill. 

1861. Population of Ireland, 5,764,543 ; of England and Wales, 

20,061,725 ; of Scotland, 3,061,329. 

1862. The M'Manus funeral. 

1863. The Irish People newspaper founded. 
*1864. 

1865. Close of the American War — Arrest of the Fenian Leaders 

— Escape of Stephens — Peace Preservation (Continuance) 
Act. 

1866. Formation of the Derby Ministry. 

1867. Fenian Risings— The Manchester Rescue— The Clerkenwell 

Explosion. 

1868. Disraeli becomes Prime Minister — The Reform Bill — Mr. 

Gladstone declares for Disestablishment of the Irish 
Church— Dissolution of Parliament. 



214 TABLE OF DATES. 

A.D. 

1869. The Liberal Government— The Disestablishment Bill passes. 

1870. The Land Act— The Home Rule League. 

1871. The Disestablishment Bill comes into operation — Number of 

Anglicans in Ireland, 600,000 ;— Population, 5,412,407 ; 
of England and Wales, 22,704,108 ; of Scotland, 3,358,613. 
1872. 

1873. The Government defeated on the Catholic University Bill — 

All Tests in Trinity College abolished. 

1874. The General Election— Ireland returns 60 Home Rule mem- 

bers. 

1875. Lord Hartington succeeds Mr. Gladstone as Leader of the 

Opposition — Mr. Parnell enters Parliament. 

1877. Failure of the Potato Crop— Mr. Parnell leads the Advanced 

Home Rulers. 

1878. Failure of the potato crop — Agrarian disturbances. 

1879. Death of Mr. Butt— Mr. Shaw leads the Home Rulers— Dis- 

astrous tfailure of crops — Famine — The Land League is 
founded. 

1880. General Election— 62 Home Rulers returned to new Parlia- 

ment — The Peace Preservation Act lapses — Terrible distress 
and increase of agrarian disturbances — State Trial of the 
officers of the Land League. 

1881. Mr. Forster's Coercion Act — Imprisonment of Messrs. Davitt 

and Dillon— The Land Bill— Imprisonment of 918 Sus- 
pects without trial — The Land League declared illegal — 
Population of Ireland, 5,159,849 ; of England and Wales, 
24,608,391 ; of Scotland, 3,734,370. 

1882. Agrarian disturbances— Release of the Leaders— Murder of 

Lord F. Cavendish and Mr. Burke— The Crimes Act— The 
Arrears Act — Imprisonment of Mr. Gray — Continued dis- 
turbances — The National League founded. 

1883. Arrest of the Invincibles — Imprisonment of Messrs. Davitt, 

Healy and Quin — Dynamite outrages — The Parnell Testi- 
monial. 

1884. Parliamentary Reform Bill— Mr. Trevelyan resigns— Redis- 

tribution Bill. 

1885. Resignation of Liberal Ministry — Lord Carnarvon succeeds 

Lord Spencer — Crimes Act expires in July — General Elec- 
tion: 86 Nationalists and 18 Conservatives returned to Par- 
liament — Agricultural Depression. 



LIST OF AUTHORITIES 



Alison, Life of Castlereagh. 
Annual Register, various vol- 
umes. 

Barrington, Personal Recollec- 
tions. 

Barry, (Stephen), A Plan of Ten- 
ure Reform for Ireland. 

Baldwin Brown, Historical Ac- 
count of the Laws against the 
Catholics. 

Butler, Hist. Memoirs of the Eng- 
lish, Scotch, and Irish Catho- 
lics. 

Cairnes Political Essays. 

Castlereagh, Correspondence. 

Cloncurry, Personal Recollec- 
tions. 

Chronicum Scotorum. 

Coote, History of the Union. 

Cornwallis, Correspondence. 

Curran, Memoirs of Curran. 

Curry, Review of the Civil Wars. 

Curry, The State of the Catholics 
in the 18th Century. 

Cusack, Miss M. F., History of 
Ireland. 

Cusack, Miss M. F., Student's 
Manual of Irish History. 

Daunt, J. O'Neill, Ireland and 
her Agitators. 

Daunt, J. O'Neill, The Financial 
Grievances of Ireland. 

Daunt, J O'Neill, Personal Re- 
collections of O'Connell. 

Davis, Life of Curran. 

Davis, Articles in the Nation. 



Dillon, J. B. , Articles in the Na- 
tion. 

Dillon, William. The Dismal 
Science. 

Disraeli, Life of Lord George 
Bentinck. 

Duffy' Sir C. G. Young Ireland. 

Duffy, Sir C. G., Four Years of 
Irish History. 

Emerson, Life of Gladstone. 

Forman, Courage of the Irish 

Nation. 
Froude, History of England. 
Froude, The English in Ireland. 
Ferguson, The Irish before the 

Conquest. 

Gardiner, The first two Stuarts 
and the Puritan Revolution. 

George, the Irish Land Question. 

Godkin, The Irish Land War. 

Gordon, History of the Irish Re- 
bellion. 

Grattan, Life and Times of Henry 
Grattan. 

Green, History of the English 
People. 

Hansard, Debates. 
Haverty, History of Ireland. 
Hitchman, Life of Beaconsfield. 

Ireland's case briefly stated by a 
true lover of his King and 
Country. 

Irish Poor Laws, past and pres- 
ent. 



216 



LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 



Joyce, Old Celtic Romances. 
Keating, History of Ireland. 

Landor, Imaginary Conversa- 
tions. 

Lecky, The History of England 
in the 18th Century. 

Lecky, Leaders of Public Opin- 
ion in Ireland. 

Lingard, History of England. 

Macauley, History of England. 
M'Carthy, History of our own 

Times. 
M'Carthy, The Four Georges, 

Vol. I. 
M'Carthy, J. H., An Outline of 

Irish History. 
M'Carthy, J. H., England under 

Gladstone. 
M'Gee, James, Sketches of Irish 

Soldiers in every land. 
M'Gee, James, the Men of '48. 
M'Gee, T. D'A., Popular History 

of Ireland. 
M'Gee, T. D'A., History of the 

Irish Settlers in North America. 
-M'Geoghegan, History of Ireland. 
M'Nevin, Confiscation of Ulster. 
M'Nevin, The Irish Volunteers. 

Madden, History of the Penal 
Laws. 

Madden, Lives and Times of the 
United Irishmen. 

Maddyn, Ireland and her Rulers 

Maddyn, Leaders of Parties. 

Maguire, Life of Father Mathew 

Meehan, Life of the Geraldines. 

Meehan, Life of Hugh O'Neill. 

Memoirs of Ireland, by the author 
of the Secret History of Eu- 
rope. 

Mill, J. S., The Irish Land Ques- 
tion. 

Mitchel, Life and Times of Hugh 
O'Neill. 



Mitchel, Jail Journal. 

Mitchel, History of Ireland. 

Mitchel, Last Conquest of Ire- 
land (perhaps). 

Moore, Life of Lord Edward 
Fitzgerald. 

Mountmorres, Impartial Reflec- 
tions upon the present Crisis. 

Musgrave, Select Passages from 
the History of the Irish Rebel- 
lion. 

Narrative of Visits in '46 and '47 
by Members of the Society of 
Friends. 

O'Brien, Barry, Fifty Years of 
Concessions to Ireland. 

O'Brien, W. Smith, Principles of 
Government. 

O'Brien, W. Smith, On the 
Causes of Diseontent. 

O'Callaghan, History of the Irish 
Brigade. 

O'CaUaghan, The Green Book. 

O'Connell, John, Life of D. 
O'Connell 

O'Connell, John, Commercial In- 
justices. 

O' Conor, Militar} r History of the 
Irish Nation. 

O'Curry, The Manners and Cus 
toms of the Ancient Irish. 

O'Curry, Lectures on Irish His- 
tory. 

O' Donovan, Annals of the Four 
Masters. 

O'Driscoll, History to the Treaty 
of Limerick. 

O' Grady, History of Ireland- 
Scientific and Philosophical. 

O' Grady, History of the Heroic 
Period. 

Parliamentary Register. 
Phillips, Life of Curran. 
Plowden, History of Ireland 
Plowden, From the Union to the 
year 1810. 



LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 



217 



Real wants of the Irish People. 
Report of the Commissioners for 
administering the Poor Law. 

Spencer, View of the state of 

Ireland. 
Stephen, Leslie, Life of Swift. 
Sullivan, New Ireland. 
Swift, Tracts and Pamphlets on 

Ireland. 

Temple, The Irish Rebellion. 
Times, Reprinted Articles on the 
Irish Famine. 



Tone, Life and Adventures of 
Wolfe Tone. 

Trevelyan, The Irish Crisis — be- 
ing an account of the remedial 
measures for the Relief of the 
Famine of '46, ; 47. 

Walpole, A Short History of the 
Kingdom of Ireland. 

Warner, The Rebellion in Ire- 
land. 

Warner, History of Ireland. 

Wright, History of Ireland. 

Young, Tour in Ireland. 



Sundry Articles in the Quarterly; Nineteenth Century; Fortnightly 
Dublin and Saturday Reviews ; and in the daily papers. 



WHAT SOCIAL CLASSES OWE 
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the latest demands of the day, and that it is admirably printed.— Times, London. 

A most valuable addition to the library of the scholar and of the general reader. 
It can have for the present no possible rival.— Boston Post. 

It has the bones and sinews of the grand dictionary of the future. * * * An invalu- 
able library book. — Ecclesiastical Gazette, London. 

A work which is certainly without a rival, all things considered, among the dic- 
tionaries of our language. The peculiarity of the work is that it is equally well adapt- 
ed to the uses of the man of business, who demands compactness and ease of reference, 
and to those of the most exigent scholar. — N. Y. Commercial Advertiser. 

As compared with our standard dictionaries, it is better in type, richer in its vocab- 
ulary, and happier in arrangement. Its system of grouping is admirable. * * * He 
who possesses this dictionary will enjoy and use it. and its bulk is not so great as to 
make use of it a terror.— Christian Advocate, N. Y. 

A well-planned and carefully executed work, which has decided merits of its own, 
and for which there is a place not filled by any of its rivals. — N. Y. Sun. 

A work of sterling value. It has received from all quarters the highest commenda- 
tion. — Lutheran Observer, Philadelphia. 

A trustworthy, truly scholarly dictionary of our English language. — Christian Intel' 
ligencer, N. Y. 

The issue of Stormonth's great English dictionary is meeting with a hearty wel- 
come everywhere.— Boston Transcript. 

A critical and accurate dictionary, the embodiment of good scholarship and the 
result of modern researches. Compression and clearness are its external evidences, 
and it offers a favorable comparison with the best dictionaries in use, while it holds an 
unrivalled place in bringing forth the result of modern philological criticism. — Boston 
Journal. 

Full, complete, and accurate, including all the latest words, and giving all their 
derivatives and correlatives. The definitions are short, but plain, the method of mak- 
ing pronunciation very simple, and the arrangement such as to give the best results 
in the smallest space.— Philadelphia Inquirer. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

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HARPER'S BAZAR FOR 1886, 



The new volume of Harper's Bazar offers a host of brilliant attractions designed to 
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Much attention is paid to art decoration, and exquisite embroidery designs are pub- 
lished from the decorative art societies of New York, California, etc. — Mrs. Candace 
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The fine art illustrations of Harper's Bazar, from the best native and foreign artists, 
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Numerous novelties are in preparation for the new volume, which opens with a 
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or cost will be spared to maintain the high standard of the paper, and to make Har- 
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